quote:

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Pope Francis attacked “savage capitalism” ... against a system that worships money.... Pope also criticized conservative Catholics for focusing so much on abortion, same-sex marriage, and contraception.... put the brakes on hating gay people, saying that we shouldn’t judge or marginalize them.

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Do you find this leader's focus on people versus ideology attractive?

[ 10. January 2014, 21:11: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
 

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Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on :
 
I think the Pope may have something here .
Any religion whose ideology focus's on anything but the message of Christs, I write as a Christian , but I am sure adherents to other faiths could plug in their focus's as well. But to focus on capitalism, abortion, etc at the expense of focusing on the message of faith is preverting faith. And that is to be avoided at all case.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
He can refuse me communion any time he likes.
 

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Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on :
 
He's saying things that have been said around the dinner table in Catholic homes for a while, at least where I live.
 

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Posted by Gwalchmai (# 17802) on :
 
Ideological religion is the variety of religion so effectively demolished by Richard Dawkins and his fellow evangelical atheists.

A new focus on the uncertainty and doubt involved in the Christian faith is to be welcomed. Let us have the humility to admit that all of us really know or understand very little about God.

And perhaps we will hear less criticism of woolly minded Anglicans who, according to their critics, believe anything or nothing. It is good that at least one church does not ask you to believe three impossible things before breakfast before welcoming you as a member.
 

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Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 
Yes! What Gwalchmai says.
 

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Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :
 
Catholicism would be such a rich, positive, life-affirming force for change in the world if we could just get rid of the ideologists. Pope Francis's vision of Catholicism would require a huge change of life and outlook from most of us RC's (getting us out of our complacency), but that change would be dictated by the heart, not by doctrine.

That Pope is a Godsend.
 

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Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
I am skeptical about this. I suppose many Catholics will be heartened by the Pope's various pronouncements; and some disheartened. Will it actually appeal to anybody else? Well, yes, possibly, but it strikes me as trying to reverse an oil tanker which is heading for the rocks. You might manage it, but then what?
 

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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :
 
Francis certainly says some great things and is attracting positive comments from the non-Christian parts of the web I visit.

That said, I think he is above all PR-savvy in a way his predecessors weren't. That photo-op with the Renault 4 for instance. True humility would have been getting the car without it getting into the media.

If his contemporary approach is for real, then great. If it includes spin, not so good
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
He's right - and as mentioned above its a good sound-bite.

I think he is being genuine as far as he goes - but his cause would be served even better if he stopped nonsense such as non-churchgoing RCs promising to bring up children as catholics in a mixed marriage, refusal to recognise other orders, refusal of communion to such as confirmed CofEs, etc.

The sad thing is that the very people most guilty of what he talks about (a) either won't think it applies to them, or (b) will see it as weakness.
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 
And yet, at the same time Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, authoritatively reaffirms the Church's position on refusing communion to "remarried" Catholics. (It pleases me mightily, I must say, to see ++Müller explicitly stating that the false praxis of the Orthodox to allow remarriage is a major stumbling block for reunification. For a couple of years now I've stressed that this, rather than the position of the pope or the artificial bullcrap about the "filioque", is the main point of separation from the Orthodox.) And no, ++Müller can hardly be considered a "traditionalist".

I'm wondering if we are getting into a "good cop, bad cop" scenario with the Vatican here... For now, I will just wait for this pope to actually do something of significance, other than being the episcopal equivalent of an ad-libbing performance artist.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
He can refuse me communion any time he likes.

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Posted by Cara (# 16966) on :
 
Thank you for that link, Ingo.

While having said above (and elsewhere) that we cannot be certain about God, I do still respect very much the stance of the Catholic Church (my cradle church) on so many matters. This statement from Archbishop Müller is beautiful, in a way. The picture of the ideal Christian marriage--and the concept that there is a promise that in the sacrament of marriage that God will be with you and help and support you--is an inspiring one. Similarly, I also admire the church's respect for the beauty of sexuality on which the prohibition on contraception is based. In an ideal world, the sexual act wouldn't be tampered with by pills or bits of rubber...

BUT. It's not an ideal world. We, and our marriages can't all handle the large families that nature--because we are biological animals as well as souls--provides us with when there's no contraception. (Or the strain of abstinence in the rhythm method). And we all know people who have sincerely married in a church with all the best intentions, who have really tried, and for whom it has gone irrevocably wrong despite all their efforts-- and their prayers. I cannot feel it's right that they should be made to feel they are sinners if they take another chance at happiness.

Also, the article says the church can only base itself upon "the clear teaching of Christ." In one place, Christ says no divorce. In another, He says, no divorce, except in cases of immorality/unchastity--actually the latter is in two different places in Matthew, as the article cites. The article says the exegesis of this second statement is controversial. But why does the Church consider this teaching of Christ any less clear than the first one?
It would seem valid to permit divorce where one partner has been unfaithful.

I'm not meaning to open an enormous can of worms here--we're talking about ideology in general, not in particular, so detailed debate on all this would be a tangent----just responding to Ingo's post.

And I think in itself the article shows that the intransigence
of the Church on this and other matters is just too inhuman, too unyielding, too much based on an ideal rather than the actual world.

The concept that a new couple in an invalid (for the Church) relationship or marriage should nonetheless be cared for pastorally, made to feel loved and welcomed and etc, while not being allowed communion because living in a state of sin, seems to muddy the waters further--if they are such dire sinners, how can they be loved, welcomed, encouraged to participate and all the rest of it? And how does that feel to them--"we're trying to love you pastorally, but of course your relationship is invalid and you are living in sin..."

When I hear the arguments of the Church for her rules, it all seems to make sense in the abstract--and yet.
Not in terms of real life and people I actually know!

Ideological Christianity does push people away. This is why figures like Mother Teresa have been so compelling--though she followed and believed the church, she didn't preach the ideology, but simply (if it were only simple!) acted out of deep love.

And yet, we do need to be reminded that marriage and sexuality are precious. The sexual bond has meaning. A marriage should not be lightly dissolved or easily thrown away.

It's just that surely circumstances do matter, do make a difference, although the Archbishop says the rules must obtain over and above any individual circumstances.

Isn't that where ideology becomes too rigid? Isn't that sort of what jesus meant when the Pharisees were trying to apply the Sabbath laws to him and his disciples who walked through fields picking corn, and he said, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath?
 

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Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
That said, I think he is above all PR-savvy in a way his predecessors weren't. That photo-op with the Renault 4 for instance. True humility would have been getting the car without it getting into the media.

If his contemporary approach is for real, then great. If it includes spin, not so good

---

quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
IngoB & Cara

Far from being "beautiful", the statement by Archbishop Muller - in particular the closing statement on Pastoral Care - sum up for many people the "ideological Christianity" that the pope was referring to.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
BUT. It's not an ideal world.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
The article says the exegesis of this second statement is controversial. But why does the Church consider this teaching of Christ any less clear than the first one? It would seem valid to permit divorce where one partner has been unfaithful.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Ideological Christianity does push people away. This is why figures like Mother Teresa have been so compelling--though she followed and believed the church, she didn't preach the ideology, but simply (if it were only simple!) acted out of deep love.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
A marriage should not be lightly dissolved or easily thrown away.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Isn't that where ideology becomes too rigid? Isn't that sort of what jesus meant when the Pharisees were trying to apply the Sabbath laws to him and his disciples who walked through fields picking corn, and he said, the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath?

---

quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Far from being "beautiful", the statement by Archbishop Muller - in particular the closing statement on Pastoral Care - sum up for many people the "ideological Christianity" that the pope was referring to.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
The Orthodox are just HONEST about allowing remarriage. Divorce under the guise of annulment is still divorce. The RCC is hypocritical as all hell on this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Far from being "beautiful", the statement by Archbishop Muller - in particular the closing statement on Pastoral Care - sum up for many people the "ideological Christianity" that the pope was referring to.

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quote:

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2 “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. 3 So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach. 4 They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them."
<snip>
23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. 24 You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
And yet, at the same time Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, authoritatively reaffirms the Church's position on refusing communion to "remarried" Catholics.

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quote:

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Today’s mentality is largely opposed to the Christian understanding of marriage, with regard to its indissolubility and its openness to children. Because many Christians are influenced by this, marriages nowadays are probably invalid more often than they were previously, because there is a lack of desire for marriage in accordance with Catholic teaching, and there is too little socialization within an environment of faith. Therefore assessment of the validity of marriage is important and can help to solve problems.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mousethief:
The Orthodox are just HONEST about allowing remarriage. Divorce under the guise of annulment is still divorce. The RCC is hypocritical as all hell on this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
From the 1960's, in Western culture, easily available contraception took care of the problem of unwanted pregnacy, antiobiotics took cate of most STD's, and the increasing ease and frequency of divorce meant that nobody had to be bound for life in an unhappy relationship. This has so permeated our culture, that there can be very few Catholic marriages out there.

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quote:

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
If someone is betrayed by a spouse who didn't fully understand the vows, or if someone comes to faith later in life, a competant tribunal is likely to find that their original vows were defective. ... This must be what he wants to achieve at next year's synod. Some sort of streamlining of this long, drawn out process. This doesn't involve any watering down of doctrine.

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quote:

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
So the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church are both looking for ways to solve the same problem ie how can we sacramentally marry people whose first sacramental marriage went to the dogs?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Makes me curious whether one who has gotten one of these annulments and has subsequently remarried in the Roman Catholic Church is actually remarried. If marriage is indissoluble, and the annulment was improperly given because of a wonky canon, then it would seem he or she did not validly contract marriage the second time, even if it was all licit.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Why would "the church" (in the person of the Parish Priest) question my behaviour? I wasn't behaving badly, only wishing to get married and live in a faithful, exclusive partnership.

My spouse left me, not me them - and they weren't driven out at the end of a pitchfork.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
BUT. It's not an ideal world.

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In an ideal world, Jesus would not have been nailed to a cross,

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Saying that marriage is indissoluble - rather than should be indissoluble - encourages what one would traditionally have called the 'French' approach to marriage where people are supposed to tolerate one another's unfaithfulness, and 'be civilised' about it.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
It also punishes the victim rather than the aggressor who is unlikely to care.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
It is a great deal more honest - and IMHO a morally better position - to recognises that there are some ways of behaving that do constitute apostacy against a marriage and should be viewed as such.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Other examples are baptism, confirmation and ordination, i.e., all personal "state changes" through sacraments are once and for all.

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quote:

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Zach82
No doubt you'd tell a woman married to a wife-beater that she too should respect her marriage vows at all costs.

When you've added some years you may come to a more nuanced understanding of the world and of the need to interpret things with more love and charity.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Of course you're right about Mother Teresa, as well. But wouldn't you agree that the first thing you think of, when you think of her witness to the world, is not her statements about doctrine, but rather her ministering to dying Hindus in the slums of Calcutta?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
But I expect you explain why not, on the other thread.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Maybe I'm just weaker. That's how I find myself feeling when confronted by these intransigent Catholic arguments--I'm weak, I'm lukewarm, I'm not up to the full faith path, I fall short. The old guilt. This makes me far more conscious of the feeling of failure than of the love of God and the Good News about Jesus and all he did and meant. (Which perhaps sort of illustrates what the Pope means by ideology driving people away?)

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Do you believe the Holy Spirit was with the Church in electing this Pope? i mean, if "I am with you always, even to the end of the age,"
means anything, plus the doctrine of Papal infallibility when speaking ex cathedra, doesn't the faithful Catholic have to believe God is somewhere in the election of a Pope?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by L'organist:
Zach82
No doubt you'd tell a woman married to a wife-beater that she too should respect her marriage vows at all costs.

When you've added some years you may come to a more nuanced understanding of the world and of the need to interpret things with more love and charity.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Zach82:
But you were married, and your spouse's lack of fidelity to you in no way prevented you from having fidelity to him/her.

Don't mistake my position here—the bible does grant that divorce is acceptable in some situations, but the goal is still marital fidelity, even when that fidelity is a cross rather than a joy.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet:
So I'm with L'organist on this one in calling it correctly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Of course you're right about Mother Teresa, as well. But wouldn't you agree that the first thing you think of, when you think of her witness to the world, is not her statements about doctrine, but rather her ministering to dying Hindus in the slums of Calcutta?

---

Actually, I know next to nothing about her. And I have no particular desire to find out more. I'll take your word for it that she was an example of practical charity. Good on her then.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
But I expect you explain why not, on the other thread.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:
Maybe I'm just weaker. That's how I find myself feeling when confronted by these intransigent Catholic arguments--I'm weak, I'm lukewarm, I'm not up to the full faith path, I fall short. The old guilt. This makes me far more conscious of the feeling of failure than of the love of God and the Good News about Jesus and all he did and meant. (Which perhaps sort of illustrates what the Pope means by ideology driving people away?)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:
Do you believe the Holy Spirit was with the Church in electing this Pope? i mean, if "I am with you always, even to the end of the age,"
means anything, plus the doctrine of Papal infallibility when speaking ex cathedra, doesn't the faithful Catholic have to believe God is somewhere in the election of a Pope?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Cara:
She was far more than that. An example of giving up one's whole life to serving others with love--because she saw Christ in each one of them. Even though (as I gather, though I haven't read those writings of hers showing this) she often struggled with lack of faith.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
I went back and read Piper's argument; I don't buy it--seems too much of a stretch to connect with the Joseph situation, since Jesus makes no reference to it or to the state of being betrothed, but only to marriage itself--but anyway, we've agreed that's a tangent.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Of course, we always fall short. We are always sinners. We always need God's mercy. But in the RC church I was (by the church's lights) far MORE of a sinner, falling far MORE short, and always aware of it, unable to forget it, because the "rules" are given such prominence and held to so rigidly by the powers that be.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Well, we'll have to wait and see how he speaks about specific doctrines, on or off the Chair.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
It's as if he is calling us to look at the meaning behind the "rules" and to always be governed by love and compassion--which, it appears from his words and behaviour, can sometimes overrule the rules.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Other examples are baptism, confirmation and ordination, i.e., all personal "state changes" through sacraments are once and for all.

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I thought Catholics could remarry after their spouse dies?

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
She was far more than that. An example of giving up one's whole life to serving others with love--because she saw Christ in each one of them. Even though (as I gather, though I haven't read those writings of hers showing this) she often struggled with lack of faith.

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How wonderful. Good on her. Glad it inspires you. Etc. Is there any particular point why you go on about her in this context? Do you perhaps believe that there is only one way of being a saint, and Mother Teresa shows us how? Well, you are wrong, as demonstrated by all those many saints whose lives in faith centred on other matters.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
I went back and read Piper's argument; I don't buy it--seems too much of a stretch to connect with the Joseph situation, since Jesus makes no reference to it or to the state of being betrothed, but only to marriage itself--but anyway, we've agreed that's a tangent.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Of course, we always fall short. We are always sinners. We always need God's mercy. But in the RC church I was (by the church's lights) far MORE of a sinner, falling far MORE short, and always aware of it, unable to forget it, because the "rules" are given such prominence and held to so rigidly by the powers that be.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
It's as if he is calling us to look at the meaning behind the "rules" and to always be governed by love and compassion--which, it appears from his words and behaviour, can sometimes overrule the rules.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Well, good point, and of course I did disagree that those things were sins, and felt the RC did not fully represent God's will, hence a switch of church. Maybe at bottom I'm rationalising my sins, maybe I just didn't like feeling like an unworthy sinner all the time, maybe I'm just too feeble and lazy to be a Catholic....who knows? I feel I was called to a different path...anyway, all this is by the by.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
Exactly. But "the rule" allowed them to kill her. Jesus was showing that this rule could be over-ruled by compassion, by giving her another chance to repent, etc.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:
I'm feeling a bit bludgeoned! Which may mean your arguments are superior, Ingo, or it may not....if I can't stand the heat I should get out of the kitchen, I suppose!

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Please note:

Everyone thinks their form of religion is non-ideological including atheists

Everyone is wrong.

Jengie

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 

quote:

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posted by Zach82
Hopefully you will, one day, learn to read what a person actually said before viciously and ignorantly accusing them of saying horrible things.

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quote:

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But you were married, and your spouse's lack of fidelity to you in no way prevented you from having fidelity to him/her. Don't mistake my position here—the bible does grant that divorce is acceptable in some situations, but the goal is still marital fidelity, even when that fidelity is a cross rather than a joy.

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quote:

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And I think therefore it is reasonable ...

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quote:

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posted by Zach82
You think wrongly.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cara:

Exactly. But "the rule" allowed them to kill her. Jesus was showing that this rule could be over-ruled by compassion, by giving her another chance to repent, etc.

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If anyone is suggesting to stone the illicitly remarried, I promise to fight them, if need be physically.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:

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Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Other examples are baptism, confirmation and ordination, i.e., all personal "state changes" through sacraments are once and for all.

---

I thought Catholics could remarry after their spouse dies?

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Indeed. This sacrament is by its nature tied to "natural" contingencies (it is about becoming one flesh after all), and hence can be dissolved by the natural process death (which destroys the association of a person to their flesh). In that way this sacrament is more like the consecration of the Eucharist. There it is also true that nothing can "un-consecrate" the Eucharist again once it has been consecrated, but nevertheless the body and blood of Christ do disappear when natural processes destroy the "natural" contingencies of the species of bread and wine (be it stomach acids or the elements).

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quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
What is the point of fidelity to someone who has left you? Then you are not actually being faithful to a person, but to something abstract. That sounds to me less like a cross than a self-impalement.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Everyone thinks their form of religion is non-ideological including atheists

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The RC claim is that a sacramental marriage cannot be dissolved. Just like baptism and ordination cannot be undone. The matter simply has passed out of human control and competency into the Divine. The most sincere and best reasons for a dissolution of sacramental marriage and the establishment of another amount exactly to nothing, since they simply are contradicted by the facts of the matter... ...it is perfectly possible that their spouse is the devil in human form and that they escaped the hell of their marriage abused and destroyed, whereas their new relationship is of such deep, honest and fulfilling love that it would make Romeo and Juliet envious. And if you feel like adding a dozen children raised in the most exemplary manner, and a virtuous life full of prayer to that, fine. It changes nothing

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
What a wonderful example of ideology (in the commonly-used negative sense). It's all there:

- The core idea, elevated to an unchangeable law of physics, proof against any conceivable evidence that this might not be the best way to order human affairs.

- The willingness for others to undergo unlimited suffering rather than compromise one's own ideas in any way.

(...)

I applaud the clarity of your language and analysis that illustrates so well the type of thinking that the Pope is condemning.

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Thanks, Russ. My thoughts entirely.

 

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Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
It does seem rather chilling to say that something has passed out of human control, so if you are really miserable in your marriage, sorry, there is nothing to be done really. It seems merciless.

I'm not sure about the Pope though - maybe he is condemning this kind of mathematical approach to human beings, but surely he cannot condemn its doctrinal basis.
 

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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 
Thank-you Russ. Excellent post.
 

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Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 

quote:

---

Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It does seem rather chilling to say that something has passed out of human control, so if you are really miserable in your marriage, sorry, there is nothing to be done really. It seems merciless.

I'm not sure about the Pope though - maybe he is condemning this kind of mathematical approach to human beings, but surely he cannot condemn its doctrinal basis.

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quote:

---

It has long struck me that one of the most serious failings of the Roman Catholic doctrine on marriage is that it underplays the horror of both adultery and other actions that strike against the foundation rocks of a marriage. Saying that marriage is indissoluble - rather than should be indissoluble - encourages what one would traditionally have called the 'French' approach to marriage where people are supposed to tolerate one another's unfaithfulness, and 'be civilised' about it. It also punishes the victim rather than the aggressor who is unlikely to care.

---

quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
The core idea, elevated to an unchangeable law of physics, proof against any conceivable evidence that this might not be the best way to order human affairs.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
And possibly your own suffering as well. I don't know your personal circumstances (and no ad hominem comment is intended). It's possible that you suffer thus also; that doesn't make the merciless system of thought you're putting forward any better, it just makes you an honest victim of it).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Russ:
I applaud the clarity of your language and analysis that illustrates so well the type of thinking that the Pope is condemning.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no prophet:
So the "no man put asunder" crap is merely this. I think that, hopefully, this pope probably gets that, while some of his less human followers may not.

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quote:

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Originally posted by no Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The Lord did NOT declare marriage indissoluble.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Well, one hates to bring God into a matter like sex, but Jesus did say "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."(Mark 10:9) Are we serious when we invoke God to witness our marriages, or is all that religious stuff merely an ornament to be set upon whatever relationship we feel like committing to at the moment?

Of course this "trapping people in miserable marriages" business is all a straw-man, since what is at issue is not escaping dangerous or miserable situations, but remarrying.

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quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
...I'm wondering if we are getting into a "good cop, bad cop" scenario with the Vatican here... For now, I will just wait for this pope to actually do something of significance, other than being the episcopal equivalent of an ad-libbing performance artist.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:
How can 2000 years be brushed aside, just because some people-pleasing Pope wants to appeal to the Spirit of the Age?

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quote:

---

Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:
How can 2000 years be brushed aside, just because some people-pleasing Pope wants to appeal to the Spirit of the Age?

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You could say the same about any issue where the consensus Christian view has changed, for example with slavery. I bet people said of the abolition campaigners that they were 'people pleasing' and 'appeal[ing] to the Spirit of the Age'. But with slavery and several other issues, the 'Spirit of the Age' has become the mainstream Christian view. Perhaps the same will happen regarding marriage and the RCC.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:
As an Orthodox, my views on marriage differ to those of the RCC, but neither stance is comparable to the vague, fuzzy "anything goes, God doesn't care" attitude of today.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:

quote:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
...I'm wondering if we are getting into a "good cop, bad cop" scenario with the Vatican here... For now, I will just wait for this pope to actually do something of significance, other than being the episcopal equivalent of an ad-libbing performance artist.

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We are already in a "good cop, bad cop" scenario. The "bad cop" was the previous Pope, Benedict XVI, who was very plain speaking and understandable.

The "good cop" is the new Pope, who doesn't speak plainly, and is not clear about where he's coming from. I'm not surprised that liberals are gushing about him, but I myself personally preferred the previous one.

How can 2000 years be brushed aside, just because some people-pleasing Pope wants to appeal to the Spirit of the Age?

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Originally posted by no prophet:
Any time someone wants to say Jesus says you're supposed to suffer especially because someone else misbehaved, well, that's theology that I rejected along with corporal punishment. And historically it was unmarried priests who told those who escaped from violent spouses either to go back or live without companionship.

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

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Originally posted by Mark Betts:
How can 2000 years be brushed aside, just because some people-pleasing Pope wants to appeal to the Spirit of the Age?

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You could say the same about any issue where the consensus Christian view has changed, for example with slavery. I bet people said of the abolition campaigners that they were 'people pleasing' and 'appeal[ing] to the Spirit of the Age'. But with slavery and several other issues, the 'Spirit of the Age' has become the mainstream Christian view. Perhaps the same will happen regarding marriage and the RCC.

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What I meant to say was "2000 years of Holy Tradition." I don't think slavery (in the common sense) comes into this. I'm talking about the modern fuzzy view that it doesn't matter much what we believe, nor how we conduct our personal relationships.

As an Orthodox, my views on marriage differ to those of the RCC, but neither stance is comparable to the vague, fuzzy "anything goes, God doesn't care" attitude of today.

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Originally posted by Penny S:

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Originally posted by no prophet:
Any time someone wants to say Jesus says you're supposed to suffer especially because someone else misbehaved, well, that's theology that I rejected along with corporal punishment. And historically it was unmarried priests who told those who escaped from violent spouses either to go back or live without companionship.

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Glad someone has said that. Where someone has escaped from a hell of a marriage with a Satan's spawn of a partner they have considered themselves bound to by the church's teaching should they consider themselves similarly bound not to accept the love which came their way afterwards? Fortunately there are clergy who do not think like this.
Right back at the beginning, God is recorded as being of the opinion that it is not good for man to live alone. If it is subsequently revealed that He feels that it is good if someone has been abused for a long time by a destructive partner of evil deeds, that seems quite contrary.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I would have thought that some people here are voicing the view that God does care - about people stuck in a loveless marriage, or people who find love again in another marriage. Why would God not care about that, if he is love, or intends for humans to be loving to each other?

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Originally posted by seekingsister:

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Well, one hates to bring God into a matter like sex, but Jesus did say "What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."(Mark 10:9) Are we serious when we invoke God to witness our marriages, or is all that religious stuff merely an ornament to be set upon whatever relationship we feel like committing to at the moment?

Of course this "trapping people in miserable marriages" business is all a straw-man, since what is at issue is not escaping dangerous or miserable situations, but remarrying.

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The question is, if we invoke God at our marriage but one party blatantly rejects that invocation and disgraces the marriage through their behaviour - why would you think that God is still at the center of that union, if he ever was at all?

If I commit sins and claim they are in God's name, it doesn't make it so. In the same way someone who breaks marital vows and introduces deceit and sexual immorality into their marriage without any interest in repentance - I do not believe that it remains a marriage recognized by God at that point.

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Originally posted by L'Organist:
There's a reason why the question of the eternally binding nature of Christian marriage vows (or not) is always going to divide opinion is simple:

The earthly rules in the 21st century are being pronounced (and pronounced on) by a bunch of people who are not allowed to be married, who never have been married, whose only experience of marriage is from the standpoint not only of an outside but a child.

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Originally posted by Zach82:


Believe what you like, but is that belief biblical? The biblical faith is what the Christian Church is concerned with.

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Originally posted by seekingsister:

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Originally posted by Zach82:


Believe what you like, but is that belief biblical? The biblical faith is what the Christian Church is concerned with.

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Yes - if you think Jesus speaking in Matthew 19 that sexual immorality is suitable grounds for divorce and remarriage is "biblical" enough for you.

1 Cor 7 - Paul also says divorce is OK if a Christian is abandoned by an unbelieving spouse.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
I've consistently argued (along with the Bible) that divorce and remarriage is permissible in certain situations, but better avoided even then.

Those "certain situations," though, are singularly few, and they don't include "irreconcilable differences."

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Just LOVE the consistent assumption that anyone who believes divorce is wrong is just ignorant of how the real world works.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
You do not care at all whether God cares. Of course God cares for anyone who suffers, and in particular if he or she suffers due to the sins of others. And yes God is also merciful to the weak, in particular if they are genuinely humbled by their weakness. But you do not care at all about God's mercy either. No, what you want is - for the want of a better word - "policy change". Or to be historically more precise, you insist that God take back the policy change introduced by Christ, who explicitly rejected the regulations provided by Moses. And it is just those regulations of Moses in a modern form that you want.

So let's cut through all this blather about "care" and "mercy". You don't want those, you want "license", you want "policy change", you want the rules to go back to the good old Jewish ones (updated to make it equally easy for women to dismiss men, of course, modernity is scrupulously equitable in its sins). You think it is quite OK to end a marriage if by the human reckoning of the partners it has outlived its usefulness. And God and the Church are to say Amen to that, for it is really none of their business how people deal with their intimate relationships. That's the actual state of play, the rest is just a desperate attempt to claim the moral high ground.

As for who is hard of heart here, Jesus states that quite explicitly in scripture.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
There is nothing that stops the RCC from adopting the 1917 canon again, for example, at which point annulments would largely cease without any change of doctrine.

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My predecessor in Buenos Aires, Cardinal Quarracino always used to say: “I consider half of today’s marriages to be invalid because people get married without realising it means forever. They do it out of social convenience, etc...” The issue of invalidity needs to be looked into as well.”

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Originally posted by IngoB:
The primary purpose of marriage is procreation. Thus if one understands that by taking the marriage vows one grants each other the rights to the sort of activity - sex - that leads to procreation, then one has understood enough for the marriage to be valid.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
What would your take be, IngoB and Zach82?

My friend never remarried: her husband did and he and his partner have 2 surrogate children.

So who loses out?

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Originally posted by seekingsister:
Yes - if you think Jesus speaking in Matthew 19 that sexual immorality is suitable grounds for divorce and remarriage is "biblical" enough for you.

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Originally posted by seekingsister:
1 Cor 7 - Paul also says divorce is OK if a Christian is abandoned by an unbelieving spouse.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
Where someone has escaped from a hell of a marriage with a Satan's spawn of a partner they have considered themselves bound to by the church's teaching should they consider themselves similarly bound not to accept the love which came their way afterwards?

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Originally posted by seekingsister:
The divorce Jesus spoke of was a casting out of the house of a wife, with no money or means of caring for herself - essentially condemning her to a life of poverty, perhaps turning to prostitution to feed herself and her children. He was basically saying that unless your wife is cheating on you, you are obliged to care for her.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
He divorced her but the church still told her (a) that SHE had sinned by being divorced and (b) she was asked innumerable times if she had "really tried and worked at" her marriage.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
15 years later, having finally rebuilt her life and gained some confidence she meets a super chap and wants to marry. She goes to her priest who approaches the canon lawyers - and he comes back with the answer that the powers-that-be "see no grounds" for her to be granted an anulment and so she can't marry in the catholic church. What would your take be, IngoB and Zach82?

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Originally posted by L'organist:
My friend never remarried: her husband did and he and his partner have 2 surrogate children. So who loses out?

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
There are many of us, including I hope, Pope Francis, who wouldn't want to see the Church return to how it was in 1917, because the rest of the world won't.

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
This is an off the cuff version of what Archbishop Muller has said in a more considered way.

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
If confession is unavailable, and people die in mortal sin, those who believe in damnation will say that a remarried divorcee is automatically bound for hell, because he/she can't receive absolution for ANY of their sins. How do you be "pastoral" with people when giving them that message?

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
This is so for people who get married during the reproductive part of their lives. But what of an old couple, perhaps widowed, perhaps divorced, who get married for companionship? Openness to children certainly isn't an issue. Sex may not be. Although widowed people are perfectly free to marry in Church, they wouldn't, in theory, be contracting a valid Catholic marriage. There has to be more than one understanding of what constitutes a marriage.

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Paul had no problem faithfully making it up as he went along.

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Seriously?!? That's the sort of bullshit argument I expect from a Protestant, frankly, not from a Catholic.

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It's really sad that you think in terms of "Right" vs. "Protestant."
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
You may be surprised Zach, but some of us aren't.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
Why the profanity? That's rhetorical. I know it's a compulsion with you. And the classic example of you, eventually, running out of words, words, words.

One day, like your patron saint old Thom, you'll stop, realising their utter vanity.

You have glimmers of humility, of doubt, then you are heartbreakingly adorable.

Peace IngoB.
 

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Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on :
 

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Originally posted by IngoB:
[The interpretation of this as divorce (defined as "separated and free to remarry") being possible on account of "sexual immorality" is untenable both by what Christ said just prior and by the reaction of the apostles just after. You don't get Jesus contradicting Moses in no uncertain terms, accusing all Israelites since then of hardness of heart, just in order to establish the then well known teaching of the school of Shammai on divorce. It is totally incoherent for Jesus to heavy on Moses only to come up with the same teaching as one of the two major schools interpreting Moses. Neither does it make any sense for the apostles to stammer that under these conditions nobody should marry if Jesus has just reiterated the teachings of Shammai by which a large number of Jewish couples were in fact living their marriages. Your interpretation of Matt 19 simply makes no sense by and in itself. It is also of course an isolated difficulty, and the idea that not only the other gospel writers (e.g. Mk 10:11-12) and St Paul (1 Cor 7:10-11), but the entire Church of antiquity including all the Church fathers would forget about this for centuries in the face of both Jewish and Gentile cultures that knew divorce is just plain ridiculous. This difficulty can be removed in several different ways, but not by saying that this allows divorce in the case of adultery. That is an untenable claim. (And incidentally, modern Protestant practice has usually little to do even with this misinterpretation. Divorce is not being limited to cases of adultery.)

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Originally posted by IngoB:
You are simply forgetting who the Boss is in all matters, including human ones.

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Don't think His Bossness is in question; the issue here is when human interpretation of what God wants becomes an ideology.

(If you think that the plain meaning of the Gospel text should be the end of the story then I'm sure many here will happily welcome you into the Protestant church )

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There is no need for God's mercy in your faith. What is God going to be merciful about? Doing what you think is the best that you can do while you think it is reasonable to do so does not require God's "mercy".

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how did you get license from mercy? By making it the law. If mercy is the law, then it becomes license. But God is not licentious, He is merciful.

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The pope is the vicar of Christ, he is not Christ.

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Originally posted by Russ:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
You are simply forgetting who the Boss is in all matters, including human ones.

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Don't think His Bossness is in question; the issue here is when human interpretation of what God wants becomes an ideology.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
Where someone has escaped from a hell of a marriage with a Satan's spawn of a partner they have considered themselves bound to by the church's teaching should they consider themselves similarly bound not to accept the love which came their way afterwards?
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Nobody ever gets bound into marriage by someone else, forced marriages or marriages where the partners are unaware of what they are doing are invalid and belong annulled, not divorced. Now, Christian marriage simply is "all in", to use a poker term, by the Lord's command. And sometimes when people go "all in", they lose. And then they have to live with that. By saying that it must not be possible for anybody to ever lose it all, you are de facto insisting that nobody can ever give it their all. But Christ has established just that as the Christian standard for marriage. If you are shocked by that, then you are in the good company of the apostles.

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no prophet: These sorts of ideas are nothing like the pastoral care I have heard about from RC clergy.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
It's really sad that you think in terms of "Right" vs. "Protestant."

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Originally posted by seekingsister:
I wonder why in the entire context, you feel in any way that these verses about Jesus' view on sexual relationships, is applicable to all Christians, rather than only to those "who can accept this." If there was something definitive here as a command to all believers, I wonder why it's written in a way to suggest that it is a specific calling that some - but not all - can achieve.

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Originally posted by Ross:
If a priest has permission to bless a second union (not full church wedding, just a quiet chat to say that if you're serious about living as man and wife then this is what it means and we in the community will support you as best we can and you're very welcome to participate fully in the life of the local church) is that not showing God's mercy ? Is that not non-ideological Christianity ?

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First, a fantastic ceremony is non-essential to a wedding. Just because there is less human fuzz does not imply any change in status before God. Second, if a second union, why not a third? Or a fourth? Surely people can have a string of really bad luck? Surely you will not condemn those who have made terrible choices before? Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion. If a marriage can be dissolved, then it can be dissolved. Period. There is then no such nonsense as "only once or twice, but then no more." The only rationale one can give for such fudge is that it keeps up appearances in spite of lacking substance. Once upon a time marriage used to be extra special, so we pretend that it still is by allowing you to repeat it only a couple of times, and you have to pretend to be all sad about it. Third, it seems to me that ideology is very much in the eye of the beholder.

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Originally posted by Ross:
By your argument, does not the whole project of Canon Law - standardised procedures for every aspect of church governance - stand condemned as incapable of reflecting God's mercy ?

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Originally posted by Ross:
Seems to me that what we want is not for the Pope to be an absolute monarch, a Boss. What we want is for him to take up occasionally the power to restrain the institution from following its institutional logic to the detriment of the people that it is supposed to serve. And then lay that power down again.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
And if God is happy with seeing that person then forced into sacrificing all hope of a shared loving life for some obscure priestly reason, then that is quite properly shocking, being without purpose.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
It's either not good for someone to be alone, or it is. It's either ordained that we should love our neighbours as ourselves or it isn't.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
This isn't the first time I've thought that the more vocal RC's on the Ship are nothing at all like the RC's (including clergy) whom I meet in real life.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion....

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Originally posted by Enoch:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion....

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ISTM that it is that if you insist on principle and rational deduction from church rules as your only foundations for morality, it is then that your morality really does become a matter of ideology rather than Christian faith or obedience. Although he has not been mentioned so much on this thread, I can't see a great deal of difference between IngoB's approach and John Piper's. I also suspect that it is a matter of temperament, or possibly even a person's Myers Briggs profile, whether that floats your boat or sinks it.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Although he has not been mentioned so much on this thread, I can't see a great deal of difference between IngoB's approach and John Piper's. I also suspect that it is a matter of temperament, or possibly even a person's Myers Briggs profile, whether that floats your boat or sinks it.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
And if he tried some stupid stunt there, then I for one would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.

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“In ideologies there is not Jesus: in his tenderness, his love, his meekness. And ideologies are rigid, always. Of every sign: rigid. And when a Christian becomes a disciple of the ideology, he has lost the faith: he is no longer a disciple of Jesus, he is a disciple of this attitude of thought… For this reason Jesus said to them: ‘You have taken away the key of knowledge.’ The knowledge of Jesus is transformed into an ideological and also moralistic knowledge, because these close the door with many requirements. The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?”

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IngoB: Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion.

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IngoB: Well, we live in times of aggiornamento, stating Catholic truths in clear and proud terms has been out of fashion for about sixty years now. Without a shadow of doubt, we must be able to discern the good fruits of this change by now…

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Originally posted by no prophet:
... Rigid rules cum the ideology that this current pope is concerned about, allow for none of the nuances of real human problems to be addressed. ... [/i]

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Originally posted by IngoB
The pope is perfectly powerless to mess about with that sacrament. And if he tried some stupid stunt there, then I for one would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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IngoB: Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion.

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I can't help thinking about PDDNOS here. I've been trained in working with teenagers who have PDDNOS, and both in theory and in practice I've learned that thinking in this way is a strong indicator of this condition.

I'm not saying that you or any other posters on this thread have PDDNOS (or that this would necessarily be a bad thing), but it is a fact of life that in most situations there are many grey areas. And most of us are able to deal with them.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
Is this the moment to point out that one of Our Lord's things about the priests and Levites of his time was the narrow-mindedness of some in being all about the minutiae of "The Law" rather than of the care of the people of God?

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quetzalcoatl: I was taught the notion of pre-ambivalence, which shows an intolerance of, you've guessed it, ambivalence, which equates to your grey areas. I suppose it's also about living with the tension of opposites.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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quetzalcoatl: I was taught the notion of pre-ambivalence, which shows an intolerance of, you've guessed it, ambivalence, which equates to your grey areas. I suppose it's also about living with the tension of opposites.

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I think that being able to live with ambivalence is at the core of most inter-human relations. I couldn't imagine living in Latin America without being able to deal with it.

And FWIW, I don't believe that our ambivalence is a sign of human weakness or imperfection.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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quetzalcoatl: I was taught the notion of pre-ambivalence, which shows an intolerance of, you've guessed it, ambivalence, which equates to your grey areas. I suppose it's also about living with the tension of opposites.

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I think that being able to live with ambivalence is at the core of most inter-human relations. I couldn't imagine living in Latin America without being able to deal with it.

And FWIW, I don't believe that our ambivalence is a sign of human weakness or imperfection.

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Zach82: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Rev. 3:15-16

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Zach82: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Rev. 3:15-16

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Are you going to prooftext all our posts? Anyway, I don't think Revelation 3 is about people who are able to deal with ambivalence of rules. It is about a congregation of people who think that they are rich and therefore lose their enthousiasm because they don't need anything anymore.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Oh, I'm just being contrary about other people's arguments by wondering how biblical they are. I'm not making my own argument at the moment.

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quetzalcoatl: maturity brings an increasing tolerance of grey.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
"I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.

So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Rev. 3:15-16

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Everyone knows that Revelation should have been left out of the bible. They messed up with that one. Blame Irenaeus.
 

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Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
Good luck with this 'maturity' business, quetzalcoatl. I have a hard enough time "becoming a little child" and obeying the Word of God to contemplate the rigors of maturity quite yet.
 

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Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :
 

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Oh, I'm just being contrary about other people's arguments by wondering how biblical they are. I'm not making my own argument at the moment.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Oh, I'm just being contrary about other people's arguments by wondering how biblical they are. I'm not making my own argument at the moment.

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There's a word for that. Not a nice one.

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Originally posted by Russ:
If a priest has permission to bless a second union (not full church wedding, just a quiet chat to say that if you're serious about living as man and wife then this is what it means and we in the community will support you as best we can and you're very welcome to participate fully in the life of the local church) is that not showing God's mercy ? Is that not non-ideological Christianity ?

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Like others, I thank God that I know "real life Catholics" capable of realizing that they have more in common than different with Protestants, and that Protestants aren't holding out on joining the Roman Catholic Church out of stupidity or viciousness.

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
When it dogmatises, anathematises, and excommunicates, while proclaiming " extra ecclesiam, nulla salus " it is creating another class of marginalised, who have no hope of salvation. This is what Jesus fought against and died for.

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
Pope Francis has made it clear that he considers God's mercy to incude atheists, remarried divorcees, those who have abortions and use contraceptives. They are sinners, but aren't outside the possibility of mercy.

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Originally posted by PaulTH*:
We don't know how much leeway there will be, but if moving further in the direction of the controversial German diocese will make sedevacantists out of some ideologists, it's a price worth paying for bringing the tenderness, love and meekness of Jesus to people who've been excluded from it by ideology

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I can't help thinking about PDDNOS here. I've been trained in working with teenagers who have PDDNOS, and both in theory and in practice I've learned that thinking in this way is a strong indicator of this condition.

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Really?! Just how low are you willing to sink?

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Originally posted by Enoch:
That demonstrates a profoundly Protestant world view.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, one of the basic themes in my work, is that the immature cannot stand ambivalence - thus adolescents see things in black and white - but maturity brings an increasing tolerance of grey. Of course, it's quite difficult, as with the tension of opposites, which pull us in different directions, but then growing up is hard. It's interesting to relate it to religious ideas.

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IngoB: Really?! Just how low are you willing to sink?

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Zach82: Good luck with this 'maturity' business, quetzalcoatl. I have a hard enough time "becoming a little child" and obeying the Word of God to contemplate the rigors of maturity quite yet.

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I'll see your Matthew 18:3 and raise you a 1 Corinthians 13:11. See, I can prooftext too

Yes, there are many things about children that are wonderful and worthy of emulation. The open-mindedness with which they approach the world, their readiness to accept other people... We should really become like children in this sense more often.

But we also shouldn't over-romantize things. Just look at any group of 8 year olds, especially when they're under eachother. Besides the many good things you'll also see selfishness, petty behaviour and yes, difficulties to see things in a nuanced way. No-one seriously thinks that these kinds of behaviour are examples we should follow.

In fact, this is way we raise children in the first place, why we take all this time and effort to try to teach them a feeling of what is right and what is wrong, and all the nuances in between. We wouldn't do all of this if theirs was already a perfect example of human behaviour.

So yes, in some sense we should be more like children from time to time. And in another sense, we should strive towards more maturity. But I guess that's another ambivalence...


PS The Bible seems to say at one point that we should become more like children, and at another point that childish thoughts are something we should overcome. Ambivalence in the Bible! How can it be?!
 

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Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on :
 

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I'll see your Matthew 18:3 and raise you a 1 Corinthians 13:11. See, I can prooftext too

[snip]

in some sense we should be more like children from time to time. And in another sense, we should strive towards more maturity. But I guess that's another ambivalence...


PS The Bible seems to say at one point that we should become more like children, and at another point that childish thoughts are something we should overcome. Ambivalence in the Bible! How can it be?!

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
It's an odd comparison, since the indissolubility of marriage is something that is not universally proclaimed, can be argued about, and is argued about at length, whereas the existence of Australia is generally accepted as a physical fact. Maybe there are people who would deny it, and of course, there are those Buddhists (and others), who might deny that anything exists, but still, a chunk of land seems rather different from a doctrine.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Can we get over the sissy-fit faux-offendedness?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Being able to deal with ambivalence of rules is part of human maturation.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
That's a fact; I can cite psychological articles on this if you want. If having difficulties in learning this could be one of the indicators of a condition within DSM-IV, then this further illustrates that dealing with ambivalence is part of the 'normal' human condition.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
You often make all kinds of comparisons on the Ship to get your point across, I don't see why we can't take this comparison and see where it goes?

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IngoB: <For hostly reference, I'm spoofing this post to make a point, without being in a particularly hellish mood.>

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IngoB: And your evidence that I cannot deal with ambivalence is that I have principles you do not like or share? Or that I have any principles at all?

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IngoB: I also know a pseudo-diagnosis for rhetorical purposes when I hear one.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Deal?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
No, my evidence is you saying "Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion." I have nothing against principles per se, I probably have a couple of them myself. My objection is to the idea that the only alternative to principles are 'whim and fashion'. At the very least, you're guilty of the fallacy of the excluded middle here.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
But the fact that a kind of thinking is also present in people with PDD-NOS seems to me like an interesting fact to discuss.

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IngoB: No deal.

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IngoB: It was just a random factoid mentioned by chance, was it?

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IngoB: Go ahead then, tell us what the middle is between principle and arbitrariness / whim / fashion, as far as the drafting of rules is concerned.

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quetzalcoatl: Is the pope an empathizer rather than a systemizer? I don't know really.

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Is God an empathizer rather than a systemizer? (I don't have an answer to this one, just trying to provoke here )
 

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Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on :
 
Surely God is a loving yet dialectical mathematician?
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Sonny-boy should to be in bed by seven o'clock but today we'll make an exception.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Little Lily wasn't supposed to play with felt-tip pens yet, but she made a beautiful drawing! Maybe we should revise this rule.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Real life has countless examples where rules aren't as rigid as they seemed. That doesn't mean that there are no rules at all.

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IngoB: This is applying the actual core principle "Sonny-boy should get enough sleep to stay healthy" and/or an over-ruling by an even more important principle "Sonny-boy should grow by experience, like viewing tonight's firework"

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IngoB: The principle here is something like "children shouldn't be given extra opportunities to make a mess that is very hard to clean up".

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IngoB: Real life has an extensive hierarchy of principles and consequently rules.

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IngoB: And indeed life has aspects where arbitrary rules dictated by him and fashion are entirely appropriate. Calvinball sounds fun in a comic strip, but it is football which is the most popular game on the planet.

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IngoB: You tried your hardest to find silly examples, ridiculing serious applications with cutesy ones, which is yet another example of cheap rhetoric.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
It's a perfectly fine comparison. I did not say that (some of) my beliefs are facts, I said that they are functionally equivalent to facts to me. Or as St Paul says "faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." (Heb 11:1). My point was not that I can prove the indissolubility of marriage in the same way that I can prove the existence of Australia. ...

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would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Fucking Ada, I need a drink after that.

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Necrophilia is hard work...

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
How do you decide the balance between these two?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
But sometimes children should make a mess that is very hard to clean up. It's part of being a child. How do you strike the balance between not having to clean up after your children all the time, and giving them the chance to discover things, even while making mistakes sometimes?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Can you give a clear rule that tells me where this balance is?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Getting enough sleep to stay healthy is important for a child. Staying up a bit later sometimes in order to have a new experience is important too. Where is the clear hierarchy between those things? How do you decide on every single moment which is more important?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
And those are the only two games that exist to you: either it's the clear rules of football or it's the chaos of Calvinball. (BTW If you'd look any further, you'd see that the rules in football aren't nearly as rigid as you thought, but that's an aside.)

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
My examples came from every single day in the life of someone who raises children. Ask any parent on the Ship.

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IngoB: Ultimately by the predicted overall effect on the child's future well-being and development.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
"Sonny boy should get healthy amounts of sleep" isn't a rule it's a principle. Turning principles, which are values-based guidelines, into inviolable rules is certainly ingrained in human nature in these dark days, but I wonder if it's accurate to project it onto God as part of his m.o.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
a consistent and clear doctrine about marriage and coherent ethical principles.. ..would, of course, be thoroughly ideological.

On the other hand, if such an approach was not based on some substantive principle, then it would indeed be non-ideological, and that would be a bad thing.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Your reason for saying indissolubility is the functional equivalent of a fact, is that it is Catholic teaching. You can't then say with any consistency of the Pope that if he changed Catholic teaching in a way which you didn't agree with, you

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would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.

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That would be to use your own private judgement to evaluate the Pope, and so Catholic teaching.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
"Sonny boy should get healthy amounts of sleep" isn't a rule it's a principle. Turning principles, which are values-based guidelines, into inviolable rules is certainly ingrained in human nature in these dark days, but I wonder if it's accurate to project it onto God as part of his m.o.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
I find that rather vague. I don't think that parents can predict that, even imperfectly, or that there is even a measure for that. I'm not convinced that this rule would help to resolve this situation, even if the parents had access to perfect information about the effects of their actions.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Also, what if it would have an overall positive effect on a person's well-being and development if they would be allowed to remarry? I know some examples in which this very clearly seems to be the case.

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Originally posted by Russ:
If as a child your aunt gives you castor oil because you're showing symptoms of an illness for which castor oil is a remedy, then that's an appropriate response which is consistent with a concern for your welfare. If she gives you castor oil every day because she believes in people taking it as a matter of principle, even if it makes you vomit and brings you out in a rash, then that's ideological. And it doesn't make her a reasonable person with whom one can debate the matter; quite the opposite.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
"Sonny boy should get healthy amounts of sleep" isn't a rule it's a principle. Turning principles, which are values-based guidelines, into inviolable rules is certainly ingrained in human nature in these dark days, but I wonder if it's accurate to project it onto God as part of his m.o.

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It seems to me that you are equivocating on the word "guideline" there. Anyway, let us know when you are done wondering.

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IngoB: If I were to force my child to never sleep more than two hours a day, you would presumably call the authorities on me for child abuse. On what grounds then, if one cannot predict the future well-being and development of a child, even imperfectly? And if even perfect information about this would not allow you to decide between ordering your child to sleep or letting it stay up to watch the fireworks, then on what grounds are you making the decision? Whim, perhaps?

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Edit: I can say for a fact that Roman Catholic moral teaching does not propose arbitrary enforcement of ethical principles in situations when it is genuinely harmful. Circumstances is one of the central aspect of a moral action, after all.

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Zach82: Oh, for the days when being principled was considered a positive trait.

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Zach82: Edit: I can say for a fact that Roman Catholic moral teaching does not propose arbitrary enforcement of ethical principles in situations when it is genuinely harmful. Circumstances is one of the central aspect of a moral action, after all.

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Zach82: When you, Le Roc, are doing is differing on what constituted harm. Roman Catholic moral teaching considers hindering natural reproductive functioning in sex harm, in that it subverts the proper ends of sexuality.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Do you not believe, MT, that there are certain sorts of actions which cannot be ordered to good?

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Zach82: And I was pointing out, LeRoc, that Roman Catholic moral teaching does not propose that universal ethical norms ought to be applied without concern to circumstances.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Zach82: And I was pointing out, LeRoc, that Roman Catholic moral teaching does not propose that universal ethical norms ought to be applied without concern to circumstances.

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(We have a strange cross-post-editing thing going on here, so I'll answer again.)

I haven't seen any concern to circumstances in IngoB about the rules about remarrying, abortion, gay relationships...

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Zach82: You haven't proposed any ethical norms that trump the sanctity of marriage.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:

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Zach82: You haven't proposed any ethical norms that trump the sanctity of marriage.

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I haven't even discussed the sanctity of marriage.

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Zach82: In that case, you are simply wrong to accuse Roman Catholic moral teaching of applying ethical principles without regard to circumstances.

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Zach82: But it DOES believe that conscience is the proper application of ethical principles, and not some vague feeling of rightness or wrongness in one's heart, as the concept is commonly understood.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
I'm not wondering at all. I know it's not accurate to project our personality quirks on God.

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Originally posted by Le Roc:
In your previous posts, you seemed to prefer Option B. Am I right? Because I'd agree with you that this would be the best option. However, the Roman Catholic Church always seems to choose Option A. And on the Ship, you have invariably been defending this option.

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Originally posted by Le Roc:
I don't see IngoB giving much room to circumstances, for example in the rule about not being able to remarry.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Letting a woman die because her anacephalic baby absolutely must not be aborted falls into that category, if anything does.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Letting a woman die because her anacephalic baby absolutely must not be aborted falls into that category, if anything does.

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Once more the same radically selective approach: let's find the most extreme case that we can, and let's pretend that what the Church has to say about that is the only thing she ever has to say about anything...

One cannot commit evil to achieve good. Abortion is murder, the unjustified killing of an innocent human person. Therefore it is morally illicit to commit abortion intentionally. If there is no escape route via double effect (i.e., unintentional abortion), then one's hands are tied.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Once more the same radically selective approach: let's find the most extreme case that we can, and let's pretend that what the Church has to say about that is the only thing she ever has to say about anything...

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Originally posted by Eliab:
On re-marriage:

Suppose I believe that total, irrevocable, commitment to my partner is a very romantic thing, and I like the idea. I want to promise her: "I will be your husband for life, no matter what, even if it makes me miserable, even if you break every promise you ever make to me. I will never, ever have any romantic or sexual relationship with any other human being while you live, because from this moment all that part of my life is given completely to you".

I can see an argument for saying that such a commitment is rather reckless. I can see an argument for saying that it is wrong (at least in this society) to insist that such total commitment is the only form of marriage we should allow. But is it at least possible for someone who positively wants to make that promise to do so and be morally bound by it?

Because that's what it seems to me that Catholic marriage is. If you marry in the Catholic church, with a full understanding of Catholic doctrine and full consent to it, that's the commitment that you are choosing to make. And because Catholicism is ideological, it is actually quite easy to understand that this is what you are choosing to do. It would be a major problem (and a gross injustice) if the Catholic clergy let people sign up to this sort of commitment without making sure they understood it, but on the assumption that the promise was freely made, are the people criticising the Catholic position on remarriage asserting that it is always a devil's bargain that would be worse to keep than to break?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Cara

That's also nicely written. I was struck by your comment about losing any sense of principle. That seems harsh to me. I've spent a long time working with people going through divorce, and they didn't strike me as unprincipled people. Of course, most of them weren't Christian, let alone Catholic.

The 'of course' is just referring to a British context, by the way!

I suppose IngoB would say that they are all on a fast track to hell. Well, I don't know that either, but most of them wanted love, as far as I can say, and didn't want a life without it.

Certainly, a lot of people like this are not interested in Christianity, and I couldn't really blame them.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
But surely, if one makes the choice resulting in the death of a woman in bearing and delivering a baby who will itself inevitably die, one has an inverted double effect, and has effectively murdered the mother. Unless it is not murder because it is a justified killing of a non-innocent human person. Which may not be how it appears to the woman.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
Going back to the title of the thread, an apparent insistence on imposing suffering as a vital part of Christianity is not calculated to draw people in, is it? Which might be what the Pope is alluding to.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
How foolish of me to find an example of Catholic moral intransigence causing a woman's death to use as an example in an argument about the relative merits of having an intransigent moral code. What was I thinking?

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Originally posted by Cara:
But. We cannot tell the future.

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Originally posted by Cara:
So a Catholic is in a very difficult position if he/she wants to obey all the rules and remain in the faith and make vows in all sincerity that may be impossible or too cruelly difficult to adhere to.

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Originally posted by Cara:
If, as Ingo says, the Pope is actually powerless to change any of these fundamental doctrinal issues, because that would be to deface the portrait of Christ that the church has built up over centuries (though who knows if this portrait is actually "true"--made by humans after all)--then his words about ideology being an illness can't have much of a practical result for living a Catholic life. They make the church seem more human and more appealing, though.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I've spent a long time working with people going through divorce, and they didn't strike me as unprincipled people. … I suppose IngoB would say that they are all on a fast track to hell.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
One cannot properly repent of something one intends to maintain.

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Originally posted by Cara:
Martyrs died because they refused to give a pinch of incense to the emperor. Today, perhaps we'd say, ah, go ahead, God knows you don't really mean it, he wouldn't want you to die for that. That's an evil regime, you aren't obliged to be honest towards it.

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One cannot commit evil to achieve good.

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
There's an Anglican commentator in the Guardian who seriously suggested that Catholics who want to be part of a less ideological church could simply join the CofE. But this option is only available in England, presumably.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2013/mar/12/liberal-catholic-could-be-anglican

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I, personally, am getting sick of the "Catholic-lite" account of Anglicanism. God forbid people join an Anglican Church because they believe it is heir to the promises Jesus made to his Church.
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
As far as England is concerned, what should be the key decider for them shouldn't be romanticism or any of the other things in the article but whether they believe in papal authority. On every other basis, The Church, for all it's faults which are many, the one that is lineally descended from those who first brought the faith to these islands, is us. It rejected papal authority in the C16 and the Roman Catholics were those who said papal authority was so fundamental to the faith that it was a denial of that faith not to submit.

On that basis, in England, rather than, say, France or Spain, it's a bit illogical to be a questioning Catholic.


In practice of course, what decides for most of us which door we go through on a Sunday, if we go through one at all, is what door our parents and grandparents went through.
 

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Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :
 
There is no such thing, art dunce, not in Jesus. It is a complete oxymoron. The finest and most deluded we have ever come up with.
 

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :
 

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Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
She was sacrificed for unchristian principles. God has NOTHING to do with it.

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Originally posted by no prophet:
Like condoms and the BCP which are used by 70% of RCs in my province?

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Originally posted by no prophet:
Consider the abortion that must be performed or the mother will die.

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Originally posted by no prophet:
I suspect the RCs will eventually change some of their doctrine and ideas. They have before.

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Originally posted by no mousethief:
I think in the case of the woman who died, the Catholic position is dishonest. It's not that we had a choice between an evil, killing the foetus, and a good, letting it live. We had a choice between two evils, killing the foetus, or letting the mother die. Those are both an evil. The idea that committing murder by omission is better than committing murder by commission is certainly not an obvious one. Sometimes you don't get to choose between an evil and a good. Sometimes both choices are evil. The Catholic Church's position denies this, and that's fantasy.

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Originally posted by agingjb:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532694 A woman jailed for having a miscarriage. Little remains to be said.

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Originally posted by art dunce:

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One cannot commit evil to achieve good.

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What about "just war"?

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Russ:
If as a child your aunt gives you castor oil because you're showing symptoms of an illness for which castor oil is a remedy, then that's an appropriate response which is consistent with a concern for your welfare. If she gives you castor oil every day because she believes in people taking it as a matter of principle, even if it makes you vomit and brings you out in a rash, then that's ideological. And it doesn't make her a reasonable person with whom one can debate the matter; quite the opposite.

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So far, so trivial. Now comes the interesting bit: how do we tell whether it is the former or the latter kind of ideology, if the symptoms are nowhere as obvious, indeed fundamentally unobservable (because this plays out in the afterlife)?

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Originally posted by Russ:
... I think you're confusing a vow made to the spouse, with God and the community as witnesses, with a vow made to God. If the vow is to the spouse, the spouse is the one that can release them from that vow. If the vow is to God, then it's a question for the professional intermediaries between God and man to interpret God's will in the matter.

Best wishes,

Russ

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Originally posted by Russ:
There remains the aspect of imposing suffering on others for the sake of the warm glow of being true to one's own doctrines - the ideological approach. Rather than the more other-oriented approach of doing what's best for others and enduring the pain of knowing that this is not what one's intellectual system says is supposed to be the way it goes.

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Originally posted by Russ:
And if you think "caring for others" means caring that they follow your doctrines in every detail so that nothing Really Bad happens to them in the next life, then I can wish you the joy of having others treat you that way.

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Originally posted by Russ:
If you think I'm wrong about what is meant by "ideological Christianity" and why it's a Bad Thing then feel free to put forward your own interpretation of what the Pope meant.

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Originally posted by Russ:
As to marriage, I think you're confusing a vow made to the spouse, with God and the community as witnesses, with a vow made to God. If the vow is to the spouse, the spouse is the one that can release them from that vow. If the vow is to God, then it's a question for the professional intermediaries between God and man to interpret God's will in the matter.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... The RCC does not deny in the slightest that all outcomes here are evil. The RCC denies that you can do something about those evils, without committing evil yourself. The RCC does not subscribe to your consequentialist account of morals, which tries to compute the best or least bad outcome of all available actions and then hails this as the moral choice. It has a deontological approach, which considers the morality of each action by and in itself, based on natural moral and Divine moral law. Of course, also in such a system a choice for the lesser evil can arise, if what we do (or fail to do) is neutral but the outcome is (more or less) evil. However, this is simply not the case here. Purportedly, the only way to save the mother is to murder the foetus. Murder is not an allowed action, it is intrinsically - by and in itself - evil. This ends the deontological moral calculus. There is nothing left to do, as much as we would like to do something. Sometimes people get sick and die, that we could cure one dying person by killing another does not mean that we ought to do so. Or at least that's the position of the RCC, and I agree with it.
...

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?

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Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?

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Originally posted by IngoB:
[QBI'm not quite sure how one would use the BCP for contraception?
[/QB]

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Originally posted by no prophet:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
[QBI'm not quite sure how one would use the BCP for contraception?

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Birth Control Pill. Internet searches combined with a modicum of thought can save you from the ridiculous.

The point is that people disobey some of the rigid ideologies isn't it. [/QB]

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Originally posted by Zach82:

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Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?

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There are Roman Catholic moral theologians of practically every stripe, including consequentialists.

Though RC moral theology does posit that ethics is rational, which, it seems to me, is what is at stake here.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
This is where you slot in your own confused ideology. First we have a vicious "argumentum ad hominem", indiscriminately attributing nastiness to those who follow their conscience just because others happen to suffer.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
This is where you slot in your own confused ideology. First we have a vicious "argumentum ad hominem", indiscriminately attributing nastiness to those who follow their conscience just because others happen to suffer.

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Alleviating suffering is hardly a "just because." I hope your wording here is merely accidentally cruel and not intentionally so. Although given the way the RCC has set up its moral guidelines, it would seem rather true that alleviating suffering isn't nearly as high a priority as playing by a set of very nice and precise rules.

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Mousethief, this is precisely the problem with a part of the RC represented on the Ship by the Catechism-wielding neoscholastic Pharisees
Rest assured there are many RCs who feel as nauseated by that sort of argumentation as many others. A faith where Logical argument based on Doctrine reigns supreme, God help us (literally)!

These people are too enamoured with their own endless capacity for pseudo-intellectual (yes, pseudo, because they fail to see the limits of rationality and the root of Christianity's ideals) that they do not see how absurd they are.

I really regret having read this thread.

You Orthodox are so much saner in many respects...
 

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Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :
 
With the deontological approach to ethics, how does one go about telling which is the primary act and which is the side effect ? If I say that you can't stop someone invading the country by shooting people, because shooting people is bad and one cannot do bad in order to achieve good, it sounds a bit similar to the mother and baby example. How do I work out that in the abortion case, the saving the mother's life is the side effect, but in the invasion case, the saving one's country is the primary act ?

Sorry if it should be obvious but I am a bit confused by it.
 

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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :
 

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
With the deontological approach to ethics, how does one go about telling which is the primary act and which is the side effect ? If I say that you can't stop someone invading the country by shooting people, because shooting people is bad and one cannot do bad in order to achieve good, it sounds a bit similar to the mother and baby example. How do I work out that in the abortion case, the saving the mother's life is the side effect, but in the invasion case, the saving one's country is the primary act ?

Sorry if it should be obvious but I am a bit confused by it.

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Originally posted by mousethief:
Alleviating suffering is hardly a "just because." I hope your wording here is merely accidentally cruel and not intentionally so. Although given the way the RCC has set up its moral guidelines, it would seem rather true that alleviating suffering isn't nearly as high a priority as playing by a set of very nice and precise rules.

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
Mousethief, this is precisely the problem with a part of the RC represented on the Ship by the Catechism-wielding neoscholastic Pharisees :brick wall:

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
You Orthodox are so much saner in many respects...

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
With the deontological approach to ethics, how does one go about telling which is the primary act and which is the side effect ? If I say that you can't stop someone invading the country by shooting people, because shooting people is bad and one cannot do bad in order to achieve good, it sounds a bit similar to the mother and baby example. How do I work out that in the abortion case, the saving the mother's life is the side effect, but in the invasion case, the saving one's country is the primary act ? Sorry if it should be obvious but I am a bit confused by it.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
There was no cruelty, accidental or intentional, in my remark at all.

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
Mousethief, this is precisely the problem with a part of the RC represented on the Ship by the Catechism-wielding neoscholastic Pharisees :brick wall:

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I'm sure the world needs more Catechism-rejecting illogical and uneducated Cafeteria Catholics. I'm not sure for what precisely, but since the Lord is giving us so many, there must be some way of making good use of them...

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Obviously there is room there for false play with intentions. So one may well wonder whether the surgeon removing the part of a Fallopian tube containing a foetus really just intends to do remove a life-threatening piece of the mother's tissue (a good act), and the resulting killing of the foetus is just a "side effect". Or did that surgeon actually want to abort the foetus (an evil act), and taking out that part of the Fallopian tube is just the means? Perhaps even the surgeon cannot really tell, because these are so intricately linked procedurally. But the principle "in dubio pro reo" ("when in doubt, for the accused") holds. We can still reasonably hold that what is being done is morally licit, even though we certainly are at the very edge of that, and so we can assume that the "accused", the surgeon, is still protected by double effect. But barely. It is IMHO entirely justified to feel uneasy about this...

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... Double effect is just about the least obvious piece of Catholic moral reasoning. I often find it quite hard to think through myself. However, your difficulties arise here because you didn't pay attention to the qualifier I added about "proper authority" kicking the moral case "up the ladder", so to speak. The reason why a soldier is justified shooting at an enemy combatant is not because of some kind of "just war" or perhaps "self-defence" argument about that action of shooting itself. The reason why a solider may shoot is because a legitimate authority has declared a just war, making the enemy combatant complicit with whatever crimes the just war is against, no matter how innocent he may be otherwise. Just war theory hence actually operates at the level of those public authorities. ...

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IngoB: But that is simply because everybody here is always asking about the very edge of accommodation.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Le Roc:
I don't see IngoB giving much room to circumstances, for example in the rule about not being able to remarry.

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True. But why don't you ask me about what prayers you should say? Or about how you should teach faith to your child? Or about how often you should have sex with your wife? There's plenty of stuff where I will say "that's up to you, really" and at most point resources the Church can offer to you or to my own experiences, if you want them. You simply ask with a strong selection bias.

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Originally posted by Trisagion:

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Originally posted by Zach82:

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Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?

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There are Roman Catholic moral theologians of practically every stripe, including consequentialists.

Though RC moral theology does posit that ethics is rational, which, it seems to me, is what is at stake here.

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The question wasn't "Are there Roman Catholic Moral Theologians who holhpd this view?", but "is that really Catholic teaching ..." The answer is that it is.

Consequentialism was identified as incompatible with the Church's teaching, along with proportionalism and several other positions in JPII's encyclical Veritatis Splendor.

Are you suggesting the classic Catholic de ontological Moral Theology isn't rational?

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Originally posted by no prophet:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
Obviously there is room there for false play with intentions. So one may well wonder whether the surgeon removing the part of a Fallopian tube containing a foetus really just intends to do remove a life-threatening piece of the mother's tissue (a good act), and the resulting killing of the foetus is just a "side effect". Or did that surgeon actually want to abort the foetus (an evil act), and taking out that part of the Fallopian tube is just the means? Perhaps even the surgeon cannot really tell, because these are so intricately linked procedurally. But the principle "in dubio pro reo" ("when in doubt, for the accused") holds. We can still reasonably hold that what is being done is morally licit, even though we certainly are at the very edge of that, and so we can assume that the "accused", the surgeon, is still protected by double effect. But barely. It is IMHO entirely justified to feel uneasy about this...

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That's actually not the way it would work. The physician wouldn't get around to considering that the fetus is relevant. Because both mother and fetus will die if nothing is done. Remove it, mother lives, do nothing, both die.

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Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
Over-scrupulousness in a person's faith and practice emerges often from an anthropomorphic and "linear-rationalistic" (Newtonian?) concept of God and from deep seated insecurities.

Ideologies are powerful because they remove (or rather, cover up) insecurity. Which is why so many converts tend to be on the stricter / more legalistic end of a particular faith's spectrum. It gives them an identity. In addition, there's the powerful drug of righteousness ("true defender of the Faith" discourse etc).

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The faith becomes ideology and ideology frightens, ideology chases away the people, distances, distances the people and distances of the Church of the people. But it is a serious illness, this of ideological Christians. It is an illness, but it is not new, eh?

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
Yes of course, that's what discussions like these are about. Discussion concentrates on where the tension is. Would you like to have a discussion about the Syrian government, where we talk about how its Ministry of Agriculture has really innovative procedures for funding allocation? Talking about the human rights abuses is so at the edge of accommodation…

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
This is a bit like telling a child that he should be in bed by 7 o'clock, but it's up to him really if he wants to wear his green or his red pyjamas. I don't think that's going to work. You can't really see this as 'taking the circumstances in account'. And the child won't see concentrating about the bed time instead of the pyjama colour as 'selection bias'.

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IngoB: So even if I accept for the sake of argument that the RCC can be compared to Syria, and her rules on remarriage to human rights abuse, and I to a Syrian shill, we would here be in the situation of you claiming "However, Syria always seems to be about abusing human rights. And on the Ship, you have invariably been defending these abusive policies."

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IngoB: To claim that is indeed exactly like a child declaring its parents to be tyrants because they did not allow it to stay up past seven o'clock, in spite of all other sorts of freedoms that child enjoyed during the day. It is a childish view of things.

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... For example, my own marriage was invalid according to RC standards. It was a secular marriage, and back then I was unbaptised and indeed Buddhist. By a process called "radical sanation" the RCC retroactively declared this to be a valid RC marriage when I became RC and asked them to do so. ...

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Originally posted by Enoch:

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Originally posted by IngoB:
... For example, my own marriage was invalid according to RC standards. It was a secular marriage, and back then I was unbaptised and indeed Buddhist. By a process called "radical sanation" the RCC retroactively declared this to be a valid RC marriage when I became RC and asked them to do so. ...

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Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I'm glad to see other people posting about what I was working towards, only much better, and with a name for it. I would add that a further problem with scrupulosity and seeking the security of an ideology is that the person doing it will not feel truly safe unless everyone else is observant in the same way. (Or, if the person is a man, as well as men doing it in the same way, women were doing it in their gender specific way.)

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I think scrupulosity is a very good term. It reminds me of a sermon I read by the poet G. M. Hopkins, in which he said that the ploughman in his daily work should be thinking of God at every moment. I thought this was kind of insane really. And I felt sorry for Hopkins, really, as it would probably lead to intense self-torture at failing to comply, if he put himself under such strictures. So much guilt, alas.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
On this All Hallow's tide, I find myself remarking on how many saints would be written off as ideologues. From Athanasius, to Martin Luther, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to Desmond Tutu, the Church has been saved again and again by saints who believe they are right and the whole world is wrong.

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?

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I think there's a difference between an apostle or prophetic leader, like some of those you've mentioned above (I don't know all of them, apologies), and the faith of a standard Christian. Some people will struggle their entire lives to overcome sin; to compare them to a saint and say "hey, you should be doing a lot better, look at Martin Luther!" seems to be exactly the type of behavior that causes scrupulosity or any other insecurity in one's salvation.

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Originally posted by Zach82:
Oh, what rubbish. We all ought to strive for greater holiness and greater conviction in the truth of the Christian faith. Being a Christian should be the foremost concern of all souls.

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Originally posted by seekingsister:
I think there's a difference between an apostle or prophetic leader, like some of those you've mentioned above (I don't know all of them, apologies), and the faith of a standard Christian. Some people will struggle their entire lives to overcome sin; to compare them to a saint and say "hey, you should be doing a lot better, look at Martin Luther!" seems to be exactly the type of behavior that causes scrupulosity or any other insecurity in one's salvation.

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
(I'm sometimes astonished by how easy it is to recruit the likes of Dietrich Bonnhoefer or Desmond Tutu for one's side of the argument, no matter which side of the argument it is.)

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

But I also disagree - don't all Christians struggle their entire lives to overcome sin; whether they are a famous leader or an unknown, unacknowledged saint? I'd hesitate to draw dividing lines between those Christians who have achieved fame and recognition in one form or other, and the rest of us humble foot-soldiers.

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Originally posted by Zach82:

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Originally posted by LeRoc:
(I'm sometimes astonished by how easy it is to recruit the likes of Dietrich Bonnhoefer or Desmond Tutu for one's side of the argument, no matter which side of the argument it is.)

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Unless you are able to explain how these theologians' thinking is incompatible with what they are cited to support, your astonishment is more of an indictment, really.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
If the Irish edition of the Sunday Times is accurate, +++Francis will appoint an Irishwoman as a cardinal at a forthcoming consistory. Interesting times ahead.

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Originally posted by IngoB:

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?

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Just briefly tuning in to end all further speculation on that matter: my wife was fully involved in this, and indeed we had a very short and simple ceremony together in Church with a priest (who the day before had baptised and confirmed me, as well as giving me first Holy Communion). I actually have no idea to what extent the Church would have considered it formally necessary that my wife was informed. But I sure considered it necessary.

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
If the Irish edition of the Sunday Times is accurate, +++Francis will appoint an Irishwoman as a cardinal at a forthcoming consistory. Interesting times ahead.

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Originally posted by mousethief:

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Originally posted by Ronald Binge:
If the Irish edition of the Sunday Times is accurate, +++Francis will appoint an Irishwoman as a cardinal at a forthcoming consistory. Interesting times ahead.

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Don't cardinals have to be priests?

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They have to be bishops.
 

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Posted by moonlitdoor (# 11707) on :
 
There have been cardinals who were not priests in the past, so I guess it's possible in theory that a pope could reverse the decision that they all must be.

The famous English example is Reginald Pole, the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury. He was a cardinal first and only priest and archbishop of Canterbury later.
 

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Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :
 
Non-episcopal cardinals are a thing of the past. As canon law stands, anyone appointed to the office of cardinal is automatically ordained a bishop, if not already one

[ 04. November 2013, 22:19: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
 

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Posted by Mockingale (# 16599) on :
 
It's a nice soundbite. Call me when the church actually relaxes any of its stances on communion for Protestants, committed homosexual relationships, birth control or IVF.

I like the new tone that the Pope has set, but talk is cheap.
 

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Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on :
 
A woman cardinal? Great, then what? That will be a PR coup, will totally alienate a big part of the RC community, and it will not really contribute to solving any problem. If we really think that all of the RCC's problems will be solved once we get women to be ordained, we are in for a big disappointment. The problem with women, you see, is that they are...human They aren't really morally superior to men, I'm afraid.

I am not against women priests in principle, but I fear that just taking females and plugging them into existing power structures will not change much. It is the structures that must be changed first.

I fear that the press, so much in love with Pope Francis because he seems to be so "refreshingly" different, is now becoming insatiable. They want more scoop. They want to stylise him as a sort of curial punk. They want to see heads rolling and women clothed in purple, simply because that has entertainment value. Deep, substantial, slow, sustainable change (the sort of change Francis is trying to get going) does not.

The sort of flashy changes the press is so hungry for will just get the ideologues (on either extreme of the rather vast RC continuum) further into their trenches. Which is what Francis wants to avoid.

[ 05. November 2013, 06:31: Message edited by: Desert Daughter ]
 

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Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :
 
One can tell the level of credibility of this silly story from the fact that the message in an Irish newspaper is that, wonder of wonders, the first two women cardinals are both going to be two prominent Irish women, both completely lay and with husbands.

In the very unlikely event that the Pope were to appoint a female cardinal, he already has a large number of respected leaders of female orders to choose from.

I'm not a Catholic, but even I can tell this is a crap story.
 

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Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :
 
Mockingale

 

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Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on :
 

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Originally posted by Cara:
Those who assert that the Catholic Church is too rigid on the remarriage rule would say, shouldn't this man be forgiven the breaking of his original vow? given that the wife broke the relationship first, given that it is irredeemable, given that he is not called to celibacy--well, Ingo might say he is, now; but it would be an enforced celibacy, rather than the chosen celibacy of a priest or nun whose primary relationship is with God....this man never chose the celibate path but rather the path of marriage. Not his fault it all went wrong. Surely the merciful thing is to say, well, it is less than ideal to remarry, but you may do so and not be considered a sinner because you have tried your very best and the circumstances have changed beyond your imagining.

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Originally posted by moonlitdoor:
There have been cardinals who were not priests in the past, so I guess it's possible in theory that a pope could reverse the decision that they all must be.

The famous English example is Reginald Pole, the last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury. He was a cardinal first and only priest and archbishop of Canterbury later.

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Originally posted by Cara:
those who assert that the Catholic Church is too rigid on the remarriage rule would say, shouldn't this man be forgiven the breaking of his original vow?

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Originally posted by IngoB:
while marriage vows are indeed to each other, with the Church acting merely as witness, that does not mean that they are not before God. The Lord Himself has declared what such vows are to mean between His followers, and therefore the baptised who access this sacrament precisely by promising to each other are also making a promise to God. Second, I am not aware that the marriage vows contain a "till death do us part, or you release me" escape clause. Your vows are what your vows are, not whatever you would like them to have said at some later time.

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Originally posted by Cara:
On the other hand: if a Catholic, in full knowledge of what Catholic marriage means, makes this vow (which he/she does in a Catholic marriage), then I suppose it was a free choice. And no-one is forcing them to have a Catholic marriage.

So, if the church isn't going to change, perhaps we can simply say, well a Catholic who doesn't think they would be able to stick to the vow come hell and high water should not get married in the Catholic church. They'd have to make the difficult decision to leave.

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Originally posted by goperryrevs:
Which is also why I don't agree with the line "it's not divorce the church has a problem with, it's remarriage", Ingo. If that's the case, then we're not talking about divorce. We're talking about separation. There is no way I am breaking my marriage vows whilst still married. But once the divorce goes through, that's it. The marriage is over. That's what divorce is, the end of a marriage, and therefore permission to marry again. People know what divorce is; people know what separation is. ISTM that the Catholic Church's position is that it is divorce that is not allowed, but it has decided to redefine the word separation to mean divorce, and therefore apparently allowed divorce - in words, but not practice.

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Originally posted by Eliab
The question isn't whether the man can be forgiven, but whether he can be released from further obligation.

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I don't think that's the strongest argument.

Suppose you are planning to meet a friend in Bristol on Saturday, and I say “I swear by Almighty God the holy and undivided Trinity and by all the angels and saints that I will drive you to Bristol on Saturday”. Then your friend cancels, and you no longer want to go. The fact that my oath was made to God, and with no explicit release clause would not, I think, mean that I ought to be considered still to have an obligation to drive you to Bristol against your will. And no one would think that I ought to drive to Bristol with an empty passenger seat in symbolic fulfilment of my vow. Notwithstanding the seemingly unconditional wording of my promise, it would generally be understood to be implicitly cancelled as soon as the reason for it ceased to apply.

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Originally posted by Eliab:

Anyone marrying in the Catholic Church should know that this is what the Church understands them to be signing up for. They ought to know that henceforth the Church will consider them bound for life to this marriage, and will not afford them a second marriage while their first spouse lives, or recognise a second marriage contracted elsewhere as valid.

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As for younger widows, do not put them on such a list. For when their sensual desires overcome their dedication to Christ, they want to marry. Thus they bring judgment on themselves, because they have broken their first pledge. Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also busybodies who talk nonsense, saying things they ought not to. So I counsel younger widows to marry, to have children, to manage their homes and to give the enemy no opportunity for slander.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
If someone doesn't want their vows to be understood in a Catholic way, then not making them in a Catholic Church, before a Catholic priest, in accordance with Catholic canon law, would seem an obvious choice to me.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I'm not sure I would want to go through with a marriage under those circumstances. And I am not, nor have I ever been, a Catholic. Nor do I go along with the no remarriage idea. I just don't like the idea of dissolution being considered at the time of marriage.

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Originally posted by Penny S:
I just don't like the idea of dissolution being considered at the time of marriage.

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Originally posted by Gwai:
I think she's saying that if a Catholic wants to be married outside of a Catholic church, people including their partner are likely to suspect that it's because they plan to need to remarry.

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Originally posted by Eliab:
Suppose you are planning to meet a friend in Bristol on Saturday, and I say “I swear by Almighty God the holy and undivided Trinity and by all the angels and saints that I will drive you to Bristol on Saturday”. Then your friend cancels, and you no longer want to go. The fact that my oath was made to God, and with no explicit release clause would not, I think, mean that I ought to be considered still to have an obligation to drive you to Bristol against your will. And no one would think that I ought to drive to Bristol with an empty passenger seat in symbolic fulfilment of my vow.

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I think if you were imprudent enough to make a vow in those words you would indeed be constrained to drive to Bristol. A possible alternative would be to go to confession and say sorry for making daft vows, and be absolved.

I am not really sure wording of that kind can be casually set aside, just because circumstances change.


 

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Posted by Anglo Catholic Relict (# 17213) on :
 

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Originally posted by Enoch:
Thank you Eliab, for clarifying my own thinking. It seems clear, put that way, that the marriage vows are given primarily to each other. God is drawn in, as an endorsement of the primary vow. These vows are made not just to each other, but before God and 'as God is my witness'. If we break our vows, we are breaking them not just to our partner, but before God.

It seems to me that the indissoluble people are saying that in those cases, one may do one of two things, but no others,

a. Drive to Bristol with an empty passenger seat, or

b. Spend the time when you would have been driving to Bristol, doing absolutely nothing else at all.

But c. on no account may you spend that block of time going somewhere else, doing something else, visiting someone else or in any other way getting on with your life.

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Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
I think if you were imprudent enough to make a vow in those words [solemnly swearing that 'I will drive you to Bristol on Saturday'] you would indeed be constrained to drive to Bristol. A possible alternative would be to go to confession and say sorry for making daft vows, and be absolved.

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Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:

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Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
I think if you were imprudent enough to make a vow in those words [solemnly swearing that 'I will drive you to Bristol on Saturday'] you would indeed be constrained to drive to Bristol. A possible alternative would be to go to confession and say sorry for making daft vows, and be absolved.

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Really? If your friend no longer wants to go to Bristol on Saturday then there's no possibility of fulfilling the vow (short of kidnapping your mate, of course!). How does driving to Bristol yourself in any way fulfil the vow? Seems perversely legalistic to me...

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Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
... In Catholic thinking, the language is changed to that of annulment where possible, and everyone is happy.

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