In Light of the World, his book-length interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, Pope Benedict XVI, who is both a brilliant theologian and a compassionate pastor, tried to reconfigure the world’s conversation about several pressing issues: the meaning of sexuality in a fully human life; stemming the plague of HIV/AIDS; serving those who have already contracted HIV/AIDS and helping them to lives of human fulfillment and moral integrity.
The world being what it is, those three questions frequently intersect at a crossroads of intense controversy marked “condoms.” The world press being what it is, and the state of Vatican communications being what they are, some subtle distinctions Benedict made in Light of the World were quickly lost, putting new obstacles in the way of the deeper, more humane conversation the Pope hoped to ignite.
Four weeks into the ensuing controversy, it is worth reviewing precisely what the Pope said, before parsing the debate that followed.
Seewald asked the Pope to respond to the media’s contention that, as the German journalist put it, “it is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms” in the face of the AIDS epidemic. Benedict responded that the world press’s obsession with latex had not only distorted coverage of his March 2009 pastoral visit to Africa; it had also deflected attention from the fact that, as the Pope put it, the Church is “second to none in treating so many AIDS victims, especially children with AIDS.” Moreover, the Pope repeated his conviction (which is borne out by serious empirical research) that the crisis of AIDS cannot be solved “by distributing condoms,” a widespread practice whose ubiquity “goes to show that condoms alone do not resolve the question itself.”
Benedict then went on to note the success of so-called ABC programs that stress abstinence outside marriage and fidelity within marriage, with condom use as a last resort. The Pope then proposed that “the sheer fixation on the condom implies a banalization of sexuality. Which, after all, is precisely the dangerous source of the attitude of no longer seeing sexuality as the expression of love, but only [as] a sort of drug people administer to themselves.” The condom, the Pope concluded, is “not . . . a real or moral solution” to the HIV/AIDS plague; changed behaviors, rooted in changed understandings of what it means to be sexual beings, are the only long-term solution to the crisis, and indeed to the myriad forms of human suffering caused by the sexual revolution and its reduction of sex to another contact sport.
It was not these reflections, however, that caught the world press’s attention, but rather this sentence, which appeared toward the end of the Pope’s discussion:
There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.
Published without the necessary contextualization or commentary in the Vatican’s own newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, that sentence was inaccurately but almost inevitably interpreted, first by the Associated Press and then by virtually the entire global media, as the break in the dike for which so many had long been waiting, and toward which so many had applied so much pressure: the Catholic Church had finally, at long last, acknowledged what all enlightened people had long known to be the truth—that salvation was to be found in latex.
Reuters was a few minutes behind the AP on November 20, but its headline crisply summarized what many were writing: “Pope Says Condoms Sometimes Permissible to Stop AIDS.” The London Telegraph was even less equivocal: “The Pope drops Catholic ban on condoms in historic shift.”
The Pope had in fact not said that condoms were a morally appropriate or clinically effective means of AIDS prevention. Indeed, the Pope had gone out of his way, in Light of the World, to say precisely the opposite, in the very next sentences in his interview: “But it [the condom] is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality.”
What the Pope was speculating upon was a subtlety that seemed beyond the comprehension of virtually every reporter who wrote about p. 119 of Light of the World: namely, the interior or subjective moral intentions that might be discerned in a habitual sinner who decided to sin in a way that was less threatening to those with whom he was sinning. Might one find here a glimmer of moral insight, on the part of a habitual sinner, from which deeper moral insights into the evil in which he was engaged might emerge in time?
To read into that papal speculation some radical shift in the Catholic Church’s moral teaching was more than a stretch; it was a serious distortion. But as more than one veteran observer of these matters noted, when you put the words “Pope,” “AIDS,” and “condom” into one sentence without the further word “no,” it’s not hard to figure out what’s coming next in the reporting.
Unfortunately, a clarification issued by Vatican press spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi, S.J., made matters worse. Rather than trying to explain the difference between the Church’s settled convictions on the ethics of human love and the Pope’s speculations on how one might discern the beginnings of moral growth in a man committing what the Church understood to be serious sins, Lombardi, focusing on the fact that several translations of Light of the World had not rendered “male prostitute” accurately, talked to Benedict and reported back to the press that the Pope wasn’t limiting his musings about possible growth in moral insight to male prostitutes; one could imagine similar interior dynamics at work in females and even transsexuals.
This comment from Lombardi was obvious, banal, and, worse, completely beside the crucial point of distinction that the world media continued to miss. Yet, even more inevitably than the Pope’s choice of example in his book, Lombardi’s clarification led to another wave of distorting stories; the AP’s headline on its November 23 story from Rome can stand for virtually all the rest: “Vatican—Everyone can use condoms to prevent HIV.”
Benedict XVI had hoped to remove the condom from the center of the world’s conversation about a global plague. Yet here was the condom, back at center stage, with Joseph Ratzinger’s longtime critics applauding his concession to reason (as they understood it). Meanwhile, those who had long toiled to defend the reasonableness of the Catholic Church’s ethic of human love were left wondering just what the Pope’s book, and the inability of both the Vatican newspaper and the papal spokesman to bring some order into the conceptual chaos, had set in motion.
Were the teachings of the 1993 encyclical Veritatis Splendor [The Splendor of Truth], in which John Paul II rejected the moral-theological method of proportionalism and reaffirmed that the Church’s moral judgment was focused on acts, including acts that could be known by reason to be intrinsically evil, now under review—or being reversed? Had a new subjectivism, or intentionalism, been given a tacit papal seal of approval? Was the highest teaching authority of the Church endorsing a method of moral analysis focused on the lesser-of-evils?
While the media furor remained, in the main, vulgar (with one prominent Catholic commentator from the port side declaring the Pope’s statements in Light of the World and Father Lombardi’s attempted clarification a “game-changer,” as if these questions involved the sort of games academics and journalists play), one serious debate did break out in the Catholic blogosphere. It centered around the Swiss theologian Martin Rhonheimer, a priest of Opus Dei, who in 2004 had speculated that the use of the condom to prevent HIV/AIDS infection, when motivated by a prophylactic intention, might not fall under the Church’s settled opposition to contraception.
Some (including Fr. Rhonheimer) found echoes of those speculations in the Pope’s book and Fr. Lombardi’s statements. Others, including Dr. Steven Long, found real trouble brewing. As Long put it in an exceptionally thoughtful blog posting, Rhonheimer’s position, no matter how intelligently argued, is intentionalism.
It is to argue that because one intends prophylaxis, therefore condom use is not contraceptive. This is precisely the effort to define ‘direct’ and ‘indirect’ with respect to moral action by reference solely to intention while excluding essential reference to the nature of that which is chosen.
And much more was at stake here than was evident from the media rumpus: “Condoms are not the whole story; causal realism in the moral life is. . . . Surrender of the causal realism of Catholic moral analysis is what is at stake in these discussions.”
Nor, Long concluded, were these disputes a matter of interest to academics alone. If the Rhonheimer approach were adopted, he cautioned, that would “signal the end of any distinctive Catholic presence in hospitals, or in the bio-medical conversations of the day, because intentionalism is frankly a doctrine that can justify anything. . . . [The] hall of mirrors comprising modernity and post-modernity has many uses for intentionalism; and none of them is good.”
So: a very serious debate has begun, if not precisely the one that Benedict XVI wished to ignite. The internal Catholic theological debate that has been generated by Light of the World, and by various attempts to interpret the Pope’s remarks (and Fr. Lombardi’s) to advance distinct theological agendas, may, in time, produce new insights. But it is difficult to see, a month into the controversy, how any of the Pope’s public goals—to correct media misimpressions of the Church’s stance towards AIDS victims; to begin a new, non-condom-focused international discussion about preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS; to draw world attention to the success of non-condom-obsessed programs that drive down the incidence of new HIV infection; to bring the Church into the center of a new global discussion about the humanization of sexuality—have been advanced.
Rather, the international discussion has been re-focused on condoms, with the Church now being mocked for being so late in recognizing “reality” (the condom-as-papal-miter is now a staple of editorial cartooning); gay activists have been reinforced in their conviction that sufficient pressure will bring the Catholic Church to heel on a variety of controverted issues, including the question of who may marry whom; and governments have likely been emboldened to dun Catholic health care institutions into accepting secular standards on issues ranging from Plan-B “contraception” to abortion to methods of AIDS prevention.
While the media misreporting and over-reporting of radical change has played its usual, mischievous role over the past four weeks, it cannot be doubted that a certain lack of clarity has characterized the Holy See’s response to the controversy. That lack of clarity could impede the possibility of a genuine deepening of Catholic moral insight as the internal theological debate unfolds. There is little question that it will put Catholic bishops who have taken a strong line in defending the Catholic integrity of Catholic medical institutions and Catholic health care professionals in a very difficult position vis-à-vis an increasingly aggressive and secularist ambient culture.
Thus, both to ensure that the theological debate generated by Light of the World is a genuine advance rather than a moment of retreat from the truths taught in Veritatis Splendor, and to provide armor for those bishops who are determined to defend the integrity of their institutions and the consciences of those members of their flocks who are medical professionals, it would seem opportune for an indisputably authoritative voice, capable of speaking in the name of the Church, to publish a substantial clarification of the issues that have surfaced over the past month.
Such a clarification might usefully touch several key points. It would reaffirm the Church’s classic teaching on marriage and human sexuality, underscoring that the basic principles at stake here are true and can be known to be true by reason. It would reiterate the intrinsic wrong of contraception. It would endorse educational and pastoral programs affirming chastity and fidelity as the morally appropriate and empirically effective response to HIV/AIDS, while recommitting the Catholic Church to the relief of those already suffering from HIV/AIDS.
It would also be helpful if such a statement would reaffirm that what the Catholic Church teaches in these complex and delicate areas of human life is not a matter of “positions” that can be changed if sufficient public pressure is brought to bear. Rather, the Church brings the light of both reason and revelation to bear on these questions, in the certain conviction that the truth liberates us in the deepest meaning of human liberation.
George Weigel is Distinguished Senior Fellow of Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he holds the William E. Simon Chair in Catholic Studies. His new book, The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II—The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy is published by Doubleday.
Comments:
Is it true that there are times in which our passions or outside events, inevitably and deterministically, overrule our conscience and free will? Or even that conscience and free will are chimeras to begin with? Or are we Darwinians who may believe that only some are capable of having conscience and free will? Or is it true that our free will exists and is always sovereign - and can always act on the promptings of our, hopefully well developed, conscience, even though at great cost at times?
If we do believe that the Creator exists, and that He has endowed all of us with, among others, an inalienable right to liberty, then we should also acknowledge that in its essence liberty, as pope John Paul II once said, is liberty from sin. And that this liberty, with the grace of the Creator, is within our grasp. Here, by the way, is our call to exceptionalism - we not only privately believe and act on this, we have the will and the means to proclaim it from the rooftops in the global city of man - determinism be damned.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Weigel that a clarification from "an indisputably authoritative voice" is advisable at this point. No one should hope that our Church is quietly abandoning the Splendor of Truth.
For a long time, the message seemed to have been "no," because a condom had the added effect of lessening the chance* of conception during the woman's fertile period. Therefore, a condom was an artificial means of birth control.
The married couples with whom I have worked all wound up using condoms. Even with a physical barrier, there remains a unitive feature of the sexual act in such couples, and depriving them of this had always seemed to be unfair.
*I too remain baffled when people say that condoms prevent AIDS or pregnancy. It's not completely true. Condoms do not prevent AIDS transmission, STD transmission, or pregnancy. When used appropriately, they lessen the chance of AIDS transmission, some STD transmission (STDs transmitted via semen), or pregnancy. They are not as fool-proof as some pro-condom people would have you beleive; they are not as pourous as anti-condomites would have you believe.
So, even if contraceptive intent is lacking, that does not automatically mean that condom usage is a moral good.
And, contraception is not a self-evident evil in and of itself, that is, contraceptive is wrong for a reason. And that reason is that it is by its nature contrary to the fullness of love, the fullness of love that is unitive and fruitful, as well as being contrary to the truth of human sexuality.
Condoms, even without getting into the contraception issue, are wrong for the same reason -- they are contrary to the fullness of love and contrary to the truth of the human person. Condoms do not promote a sexuality of love, but a utilitarian sexuality of use. They do not promote a humanization of sexuality, but a mechanization of sexuality. Condoms do not promote human dignity and freedom, where one can joyfully live in chastity, but instead promote a sexuality of slavery, where one is enslaved to the passions, where satiating sexual desire takes priority over everything.
Condoms are not used to prevent pregnancy or prevent disease. One can do that simply by not having sex. Rather, condoms are used to have sex. THAT is their primary purpose, to facilitate the sex act. And if such usage aids and abets some other wrong, if condom usage contributes to a sexuality of use, of treating the other person as a sex object, merely a means for sexual pleasure, rather than as an act of self-giving in the fullness of love, then the condom usage itself is a wrongful act, considerations of contraception aside.
but why specifically a "male prostitute?" under what circumstances? with what intentions? to which specific acts is the pope referring?
any thoughts?
http://endofthemodernworld.blogspot.com/2010/12/rumor-that-there-is-no-problem-with-fr.html
What's the alternative? The alternative is to not offer false dilemmas like this. The alternative is . . . wait for it . . . chastity. Loving someone enough to NOT say to them, "honey, I have a deadly sexually transmitted disease, so let's have sex."
I know it is unthinkable in this day and age that people might forego getting it on at every opportunity. But that is the real alternative.
Do you recommend chastity for married sero-discordant couples?
I know everyone focuses on extra-marital sex in discussing the evils of condom use, but what about sex within a marriage?
Or imagine someone who got HIV through sexual activiy outside of marriage, but then turns his/her life around and falls in love with someone who is HIV negative and wants to marry. Must having HIV preclude him or her from marriage? (Must consequences of extra-marital sexual relations preclude anyone from marriage?)
There are many sero-discordant couples in Africa, and quite a number here in the US.
I understand the reasoning behind the idea that no use of condoms in sexual activity is allowed. But I also see the reasoning behind the idea that a married couple might want to include genital intercourse as part of their sexual life and use condoms for disease prevention.
It's easy to carry this discussion to a sermon about the evils of extra-marital sexual activity. That's fine - I can see that. But within the context of marriage, it's not as black and white. I appreciate your advocacy of chastity. But isn't married conjugal love with proper respect for the other's health also of value? Maybe not. But I think it is.
My hope in reading Pope Benedict XVI's book quotes was that he might be more accepting of the difficulty married sero-discordant couples might face: is condom use to lessen the possibility of disease transmission worth the moral harm it represents by lessening the possibility of contraception? I thought the answer might be "yes". It seems some people might read a "yes" into what the pope or his spokesman said. But for Bender the answer seems "no": if someone has HIV or another sexually transmitted infection, the answer is to "forego getting it on" and thus eliminating the debate about condoms.
JM
For a link to Long's comment, see here: http://endofthemodernworld.blogspot.com/2010/12/rumor-that-there-is-no-problem-with-fr.html
Thanks as always to George Weigel for clarifying the debate and adding to the chorus urging an official clarification by CDF on this question.
http://endofthemodernworld.blogspot.com/2010/12/public-letter-to-sandro-magister.html
It begins:
Saturday, December 18, 2010
A Public Letter to Sandro Magister
As of 6:59 a.m., Dec. 18, 2010, I have sent the following letter to Sandro Magister. I print it here because its content is pertinent to the confusion being propounded first by Fr. Rhonheimer, and now by one of his chief critics, Luke Gormally. Evidently the two share one common significant error: that the absence of a public condemnation by the CDF is the same as a public vindication issued by the CDF. Certainly there is need for clarification, as George Weigel has pointed out. But the CDF has never declared the position of Rhonheimer in his famed Tablet article to be wholly unproblematic, much less publicly endorsed it.
Probably in fact, the Church should never have ventured into this problematic area at all. Since, lacking a firm biblical foundation, the Church has said many things that may not stand up to the test of time. For example, remember the 1) "Every sperm is sacred" campaign? Then too, 2) the whole decision to ignore pederastical priests, was in part because the Church decided to follow modern (Psychological) ideas, with its own related, new doctrines.
In the last 60 years or so, largely under pressure from "conservatives" that want the Church to comment on every aspect of political life and so forth, the Church has continually ventured into new subjects - and more speculative theologies. Trying to modernize, but also micro-manage every aspect of our lives. But as it does that, it has often generated new ideas ... that do not stand the test of time. So that the Church will often have to begin reversing itself, embarrassingly, in public.
As it is beginning to do, even now. In the matter of condoms. Or for that matter, pederasty.
As for Long's blog post that characterizes Rhonheimer as an "intentionalist," whose work is easily exploited by "modernity and postmodernity," this is the kind of rhetorical excess combined with indefensible scholarship for which Long has become well-known. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the literature will know that such charges are completely without basis.
If Weigel would do sufficient investigation to verify the merit of what I have said above, perhaps he would then reconsider whether he is turning to--and against--the wrong persons for philosophical support.
Perhaps where one spouse has a communicable disease, the couple is being called to marital chastity.
Is that really so incomprehensible? Mary and Joseph had a chaste and virginal marriage, and theirs was the greatest marriage of all. Moreover, in heaven, people are not given in marriage, i.e. they don't have sex.
What about the person whose spouse has abandoned him/her, or has otherwise divorced him/her? As a sacramental matter, they are still married. But does that mean that either gets to have sex with a third party, merely because the spouse isn't there or refuses to have sex?
Is sex really the be all and end all? Certainly our hyper-sexualized society would say so. But perhaps a where one spouse has a communicable disease, the couple is being called to overcome their slavery to sexual passions? Perhaps they are called to the fullness of love, that love which is self-sacrificing, which looks to the good of the other, including the good of not putting the other even at risk of disease and the sacrifice of giving up selfish sexual demands.
And as for Catholic teaching on human sexuality, anyone who has read the relevant documents can plainly see for himself that they are all grounded in scripture -- from "In the beginning" all the way through to the One who "makes all things new" -- as well as upon reason and the truth of the nature of the human person.
Since it seems that you are familiar with theology according to Monty Python, then please allow me to ask you a question: have you ever read and seriously reflected on the encyclical "Humanae Vitae"?
If you are a serious person, who is also familiar with this encyclical, is it not self evident that what pope Paul VI warned us about not only came to be, but actually exceeds his warning? Is it not obvious this encyclical has not only been vindicated by time, it continues to be a prophetic warning to us all?
Please try to grasp the larger frame of this debate - it emphatically is not about the Church micromanaging our sexual lives. This debate is about the truth of who we are as persons - that from the moment of our conception we are made in the image of God, and that we are not simply one of the processes of the natural world.
If you want to understand what happens when this truth is denied, look no further than the twentieth century ideologies that denied the existence of God, and treated their subjects as soulless masses.
In this example (the use of condom of a male prostitute) there are three moral principles involved: (1) The use of con-dom, (2) prostitution (male or female), and (3) extra-marital sex, all which are condemned by the Church as morally evil.
In civil and canonical laws. the circumstance/s which mitigates or lessens the commission or omission of a wrongful act never justifies the act/s. Therefore, even though the guilt and culpability of a prostitute (male or female) for using condom to prevent the spread of a disease during an extra-marital act, he/she remains guilty of the commission of the these acts.
We should look at the comment of the Pope in this manner.
(The commentator is an Officer of the Philippine Alliance of X-seminarians or PAX)
These remarks should be seen in that context.
Another positive effect of the controversy is that the book is a bestseller, at least in Spain, and many persons are reading the beautiful teachings of Benedict.
The thoughts in Humanae Vitae are interesting speculations - but they are very, very speculative. No one should have ever declared them to the word of God. Finally, the Monty Python criticism of all that, is telling enough.
Regarding Biblical warrant for these new doctrines: do you really think the Bible's speaking of "new" things, for instance, is really enough to authorize making up such a totally new doctrine, on condoms? Is there really anything in the Bible, or even church Tradition, that would allow descending to that level of specificity, on this matter of sexuality?
On what real authority, did the Church start to make up these things? Do you really think the Catholic hierarchy is that reliable, or authoritative? Why do you trust the leadership that knew about pederastical priests for centuries, and yet kept assuring us the Church was all but "perfect" and "holy"?
Indeed: the Church never should have opened its mouth on these matters at all. When it did - under the precipitous urging of "conservatives" - it actually began to depart even, from the Bible itself. (As many readers noted in the comments on the abortion issue, the "human" status of the fetus, in "Signposts at the Crossroads," an earlier First Things article).
Of course many of us want to defend "humanity"; but defining as human, the embryo - something without the greatest and most defining human asset of all; the human mind or "spirit" or soul - is a travesty, a mockery of humanity.
Many things, to be sure, might be very firmly known to be right or wrong, intrinsically; deductively, analytically. Just from the meaning of the words. But just because something seems analytically, intrinsically, certain, does not prove that it is more important, than more speculative things.
For example: we know that 2 + 2 = 4. This seems analytically - or "intrinsically" - true, just from the axioms of Mathematics. Yet is this fact, that is known rather certainly, known "intrinsically," always more important than, things merely suspected, or things that are merely proportional or contingent or probable?
An example. Suppose an armed intruder breaks into your house; and points his gun at your wife. Here, the likelihood of his shooting your wife, is not absolutely certain; it is merely possible, even proportionately probable ... but not analytically definite or certain. There is nothing "intrinsic" in the situation, that says that the evil of murder, is definitely going to occur.
In this situation, should you therefore ignore the merely possible death of your wife ... to concentrate on the analytically, intrinsically certain fact ... of reciting two plus two equals four? (Or to contemplate, say, the intrinsic evil of punishing innocent people).
The point here would be that, first of all, one of the constituent assumptions of the "intrinsic evil" theory, is not true. Specifically, it is not the case, that things known analytically or "intrinsically," always out-weigh things that are uncertain.
Thus, one of the major constituent elements of the Pope's alleged "intrinsic evils trump all" argument, is simply, false.
And therefore, your assessment of the churches current theories on condoms, needs to be changed.
I know a lot of neo-conservative Thomists want the same "more Catholic than the Pope" conclusions as Long, but my point was that he was a poor choice for GW because the competent Thomist moralists know that Long's approach is not even a serious reading of Thomas.
Therefore, a moral theory giving intentionality, some say, is now being accepted by the Vatican. But Weigel here asserts that notion, is not true; that intentionality, and related ideas like "proportionality," are firmly rejected by the Vatican.
Yet to be sure, Weigel is simply wrong. First 1) there are many documents in Christianity in general, that do in fact seem to allow for intent. So for example, if someone accidentally, un"intentionally" causes a death, without meaning to do so ... that is often not considered murder; but only an accident.
For that matter in fact, 2) in the Pope's 2004 memo, "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion," then-Cardinal Ratzinger clearly suggested that voting for pro-abortion political candidates, "can be permitted," given the presence of "proportionately" more important issues. And if we are voting for the candidate, not with the intention of supporting their pro-abortion stance, but rather to support other, proportionately more important things.
Thus, Weigel's assertion that the church does not accept, is not leaning towards "intentionality" and "proportionality," as major moral considerations, is simply, incorrect. Indeed, the Church has always given such things consideration.
Mr. Weigel is therefore wrong, to reject the Vatican; to reject the Vatican spokesman assigned by the Pope. The fact is specifically, to use a condom, intending not contraception, but prevention of disease, seems allowable.
As indeed, the Vatican suggested.
"Of course many of us want to defend "humanity"; but defining as human, the embryo - something without the greatest and most defining human asset of all; the human mind or "spirit" or soul - is a travesty, a mockery of humanity."
James, consider that this line of speculative thinking, so common today, actually states that we become human by degrees or fractions - that embryos are, say, "0% human", foetuses perhaps "30% human", and then, as if by magic, the passage thru the birth canal and the detachment of the umbilical cord confers "100% humanity" on what was, just a few minutes before, an "it".
As you undoubtedly know, this reasoning is now being applied to those who did pass thru the magic birth canal some time ago, and are at the end of their lives - with the euphemism "dignity" thrown in for good measure.
Consider a world where this reasoning now being applied to the unborn human beings, is also applied to all born human beings. What "measures of humanity" would such a world invent? Who in such a world would qualify for the coveted "100% human" appellation, and who would not? And who would decide these questions? If you think this is far fetched, think again.
Your post bears a striking relationship in pov, argumentation and diction to those of Joe the Human, the man of a thousand aliases. Is "James" another?
Best,
Richard
What of the use of condoms by male prostitutes when compared to the heresies of religious liberty, collegeiality, ecumenism, and the blasphemy of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and the destruction of human souls brought about by the counterfeit church of Vatican II?
One need only read the writings of our Holy Popes Leo XIII, Pius X, Pius XI, and Pius X11 who warned us of this insidious heresy already infiltrating the church while the masses were already indoctrinated into Americanism, Naturalism, and Freemasonry.
Good Catholics. Run, don't walk away from this counterfeit church and this blasphemous magazine.
Aristotle agrees, when he says at the beginning of Book 3 of the Nicomachean Ethics, “All wicked men are ignorant of what they ought to do, and what they ought to avoid; and it is this very ignorance which makes them wicked and vicious. Accordingly, a man cannot be said to act involuntarily merely because he is ignorant of what it is proper for him to do in order to fulfil his duty. This ignorance in the choice of good and evil does not make the action involuntary; it only makes it vicious.”
1) Whether it is consistent with Augustine or Aristotle or not, whether it is right or wrong, intentionality is firmly ensconced elsewhere in Catholic tradition.
2) For that matter, read more carefully, your excerpt from Augustine, seems to leave open the possiblity that the a) ACT of accidental or ignorant causing of something bad, is itself a "sin"; but b) the "WILL of the person who commits it, is not to be said to have been sinning; since a sin, as such, was not intended by the will. So in effect, the person has not "willfully" sinned; though his act was a sin.
3) Consistent with the Intentionality idea: the recent attempt to suggest that voting for pro-abortion canidates "might be permitted" if we do not intend to vote for the abortion stance, but some other issue. Which is now found here, consistent with Augustine. At least as much of him as you have quoted.
4) Thereofre, allowing people to wear condoms, if the "intent" is the prevention of disease, is OK too. On grounds of precisely, interntionality.
5) While for that matter however, in my opinion birth control is allowable as well; indeed the Church a) allows the rhythm method. And it b) does not allow its priests to marry; thus forbidding them in effect, to reproduce. Even though they have sexual organs designed by nature for reproduction, they are not required or allowed to use them for that.
Obviously therefore, in considering what it means to be a human being, even the Church finds that there are "proportionately" more important things in life, than reproduction. And/or full employment of the sexual organs.
To make its position on humanity and sexuality more consistent with common sense and its own Tradition therefore, the Church will need to revise much of what it was urged by conservatives to say, since Vatican II. By conservatives like Weigel.
Proportionalism as a moral theory has been decisively defeated. Catholic moral doctrine is quite reasonable and defensible if one has the help of competent moralists; the problem is that there are a multitude of persons on the left and right who think they fit into this category but don't.
Keep in mind, 1) though at times it has had great respect for Aquinas, the Church is not necessarily, entirely, Thomist. Therefore, what Aquinas says, is often not what the Church actually says. Unfortunately, then, a closer reading of Aquinas might actually be all but irrelevant here.
2) But working for now within the roughly Thomast framework, as presented here, in part by yourself? Then note this: if human "acts" are things done for "ends," note that to do something "for" and "end," implies consciously chosing that end; such ends of course, must be consciously willed.. THerefore, we must will something, for it to be an "act," in the definition you have prsented. Therefo0re again, if we did not will something, then we are not responsible for it; not even the "act."
Indeed, this corresponds to many things in secular law. And in church laws too. For example: if someone accidentally killed someone else in an auto accident, they did not intend - or "will" - that end. Therefore, they are not only a) not culpable in the sense of "will"ing a bad deed; they are b) not VERY ulpable even for the act, either. According to one construction of Interntionalism, consistent with what has been said above.
To be sure, recent law has been holding drunk drivers for example, more culpable in the past; and often we apply at least "manslaugher" charges. And in infamous cases, "murder" chargers.
But manslaughter is generally the more apporopriate idea; and the penalties for that are quite a bit lower than intentional killing. Precisely because the "outdated" and "obsolete' and toally defeated concept of Intentionality fo the will ... is invoked every day in the law, in such cases.
Can you suggest a good intro to Aquinas? Having (finally!) gone to the trouble of reading him, I doubt whether anyone else will do it. Even the relatively "short" summaries and commentaries are too long and too murky. I have not found anything to give a newbie.
@Richard - I noticed the same elements in today's "James." Check him out against "Henry", "Joe the Human", and "Joe the Human Person" immediately above -- same guy, ya think?
"Of course many of us want to defend "humanity"; but defining as human,
the embryo - something without the greatest and most defining human asset of
all; the human mind or "spirit" or soul - is a travesty, a mockery of humanity."
Biblical reference should be made to Jeremiah 1:5 NIB:
"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
The pronoun "you" used in that conversation could only be directed at
someone capable of understanding that statement. This is scriptural authority.
There are many logical errors in your commonplace objection, based on Jer. 1.5. First, 1) God to be sure, knows all things, before they exist. But they exist only as a thought in God's mind; not as an actual reality.
But 2) more importantly: some scholars note that your thinking, represents an example of the "anachronistic fallacy." To explain: God knew those of us who became human, before we were born; but if you never grew to humanity, there is no "us" for God to know. That is, if an embryo is not a human person, then note, God might have known the image of an embryo; but not of a person, in his mind.
All of "us" of course, grew to full humanity; and so God knew "us." But? Those embryos who did, are known to God as embryos; not people.
By the way, 3) Proportionalism is not long-gone: a) the pope, Joe Ratzinger himself, endorsed it, in his 2004 memo, "Worthiness to Receive Holy Communion"; in which he told us that voting for pro-abortion politicians "can be permitted" in the presence of "proportionately'"more imortant reasons.
In fact, b) God himself is a proportionalist: he allows all kinds of evil, he allows us all kinds of sinning ... in order to eventually offer us a proportionately greater good: Salavation.
"Proportionalism is long dead"? Really? Do you think God is dead?
That's the problem with Catholic "Conservatives"; they present themselves as very pious; but it is all a show. Underneath, they are merely using the Church, to present their own human opinions, the "traditions of men," prsenting conservative politics as the word of God. Even as they actuallly contradict the 1) Pope and 2) God himself.
God, the Proportionalist.
I think this is a very good development, and it will hopefully chasten those who were looking for "heads to roll," and instead allow a more intelligent discussion to proceed, which the Holy Father rightly thinks is needed.
You contend that-
"There are many logical errors in your commonplace objection, based on Jer. 1.5.
First, 1) God to be sure, knows all things, before they exist. But they exist only
as a thought in God's mind; not as an actual reality.
Do you actually know what exists in God's mind? If my objection is so commonplace
why hasn't it come out in this blog? It is more of commonsense, with most here
trying to conjure up a philosophical personae, maybe it is hard to grasp truth in its
simplicity.
You claimed that:
"Those embryos who did, are known to God as embryos; not people." You're really
trying to speak for Jeremiah here, you're hardly in his class. I don't see you qualified
to speak for a prophet or worse interpret his words.
As for your take on conservative catholics being pious etc. you generalize but you
forget the politicking that went on during Christ's time e.g James and John's mother lobbying for her sons to sit at Jesus' right hand. Ok what about
As for your remark on God the proportionist. That's God, get over it! He is just as He
is merciful and I wouldn't try to force fit your logical halos over this one, you might
blow a fuse.
"Regarding the various scripture quotes above, and while recognizing the authority
of scripture, I would emphasize that these are fundamentally questions of ethics,
that there is no sola scriptura ethics, and that these depend on philsophical argumentation.
Who died and made you adminstrator?
"First Things is published by The Institute on Religion and Public Life, an interreligious, nonpartisan research and education institute whose purpose is to advance a
religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society." see About Us
and note the words religiously informed public philosophy.
Philosophists who try to discover the truth but put away the very source of all
truths, the scripture, remind me of my dog Soc, for socrates. Soc, every now and
thinks he has something new with his wagging appendage, he then has a go
at his tail and spins around vigoroulsy, almost convulsively in both directions
until he finally catches to his surprise, nothing more than himself...No direction,
all motion.
Ahh, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune...
I thought blog comments were an opportunity to exchange opinions, ideas and even arguments.
My point about there being no sola scriptura ethics is illustrated by Dt 21:18-21, which says the unruly child should be stoned to death. You can't just take that literally or the race would be extinct.
You would understand my point better by taking some time to study the interrelation between theology rooted in Scripture and philosophy, an interaction that has been lively even as the Sacred texts were being written by men inspired by the Holy Spirit (see the contemporary literature on Paul and the Stoics, for example).
A good place to start is JPII's Fides et Ratio. Also very good are the teaching company courses by Philip Cary.
Better said, indeed: good intention - or no intention at all, in the case of an accident - does not make a bad deed "good." But it does, according to conventional ethics, partially absolve those who cause accidents, of much personal responsibility for that act; since they did not "will" it.
E.g.: "manslaughter," unintentionally causing a death, is a much less serious crime than "murder," the intentional version. The "act" may (or in other cases, many not) still be bad; but we are no longer held totally responsible for it.
This construction of Intentionality is thoroughly embedded in the Bible, and in thousands of years of jurisprudence. It is uninformed or disingenuous of Catholic "conservatives" like Weigel, to suggest that it has been thoroughly rejected.
this link is worth a very careful reading since it offers the best overview of all the problems mentioned above but with more clarity and depth.
"I thought blog comments were an opportunity to exchange opinions, ideas and even arguments."
I thought so too, but when you say that "there is no sola scriptura ehtics"
you preclude other arguments and opinions.
"My point about there being no sola scriptura ethics is illustrated by Dt 21:18-21,
which says the unruly child should be stoned to death. You can't just take that
literally or the race would be extinct."
Your statement is exaggerated, the race would not become extinct, it hasn't .
The norms under old testament were obviously stricter.
As for sola scriptura, I didn't bring that up, you did. You mention JPII, please note
that all his encyclicals are based on scripture e.g. Christifidelis Laici, the workers
at the vineyard etc. CHeck out Humanae Vitae, mentioned somewhere in this blog
where the encyclical is interspersed by Pope Paul VI with passages from Matthew
and John.
To try and sustain a discussion on purely sterile philosophical reasoning by
hemming out scriptural passages from the discussion and then suggesting the interelation between theology rooted in scripture and philosophy sounds
contradictory.
By the way Jer. 1:5 was alluded by the pontifical council during the anglican-
roman catholic commission in 2005 for a commentary on Mary: Grace and Hope in
Christ.
Arguably, Antony seems to say therefore, there is not really a DEFENSIBLE Ethics in the Bible, at all.
Here we have people arguing that it makes sense to shield onesself from deadly diseases with a thin plastic bubble, rather than simply avoiding the unnecessary exposure. The upside is momentary (illicit) pleasure; the downside is death (and myriad orphans).
The apparently irresistible urge to fornicate paints us as utterly lacking in free will—pathetic non-sentients. Even from a materialist outlook it should be clear: Fornication is habit-forming, and condoms are *not* foolproof (so sooner or later the habitual fornicator *will* be exposed). It would be hard to more clearly illustrate that the libertine, atheist majority in the press is insane and/or in the grip of a sinister will than evidenced by its ludicrous take on the matter. Or could it be that, though they see the emperor has no clothes, they're somehow titillated, and so play along rather than point it out? Either way, it's very disturbing.
†