Thread: Purgatory: Ideological Christianity is an illness which pushes people away: pope Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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I think he's right: "Pope Francis called ideological Christianity “an illness” that doesn’t serve Jesus Christ. Instead, it “frightens” people and pushes them away from religion."
Link. I imagine there are other links.
quote:
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.
Do you find this leader's focus on people versus ideology attractive?
[ 10. January 2014, 21:11: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by PaulBC (# 13712) on
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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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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He can refuse me communion any time he likes.
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on
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He's saying things that have been said around the dinner table in Catholic homes for a while, at least where I live.
Posted by Gwalchmai (# 17802) on
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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.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
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Yes! What Gwalchmai says.
Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on
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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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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?
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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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
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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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.
Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
He can refuse me communion any time he likes.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
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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?
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
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quote:
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
What if he uses publicity with the car to model how he thinks Christian leaders should behave? It seems to me that might be a perfectly valid reason to allow publicity about his modest lifestyle.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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You're right. It sends a strong message to the RC clergy (although this might send a stronger one...).
I have come to realise that media-savviness is a part of contemporary life. The big challenge, though, is to make sure that there is substance as well as style. That's much less easily discerned.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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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.
And when the Archbishop refers to "recent documents of the Magisterium" one can safely assume he is referring - at least in part - to pronouncements by the current pope on gays and women priests.
This is not the place to go off on a tangent about the RC church, gays, women, etc, etc.
But it just brought to my mind a wedding I attended (in a professional capacity) some years ago: the groom had had 1 marriage annulled by the church and the bride two. Goodness only knows on what grounds these anulments were made - between them they had 11 children so non-consummation is definitely not in the frame.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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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.
Posted by Jengie Jon (# 273) on
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Please note:
Everyone thinks their form of religion is non-ideological including atheists
Everyone is wrong.
Jengie
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
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quote:
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.
Well yes, that's what I was trying to say at the end of my post--beautiful in a way, when speaking about the ideal sacramental marriage, but demonstrating rigid ideology.
And yes, if it's true, as appears, that annulments are given rather easily, then certainly the Orthodox practice is more honest, and more merciful to human frailties and real situations.
Jengie--so right, we all have ideologies--I think what's at issue in this thread is whether people put the ideology on a pedestal as if it is more important than Christ himself, and his spirit, and the basic overriding commandment to love.
Problem is--if we start judging each other's ideologies, we can end up all pompous and holier-than-thou before we know it!
I do like this Pope's approach but will it mean anything concrete or just a change in emphasis? Even a change in emphasis would be helpful, though.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
BUT. It's not an ideal world.
In an ideal world, Jesus would not have been nailed to a cross, there would never have been any Christian martyrs and the sacrament of reconciliation would be superfluous. I have very little time for this sort of argument. One can validly discuss whether Church policy on the remarried should change. One cannot claim that the problem is that the Church is naively proposing an unachievable ideal. First, proposing ideals for life that can only be followed by bearing a cross, from barely noticeable to crushingly heavy, is the bread and butter of Christianity. Second, if there is one such ideal where the Church can look back on a near unfathomable wealth of experience from massive numbers of people in all places and through all ages trying to live up to tough (Christian) ideals, then it is marriage. There never ever was a time where the Church was naive about this. Heck, Matt 19:10 - the apostles were already struggling with the ideal at the very moment when it was being proposed by Christ, since of course the experience of "marriage" in a wider sense is simply a human universal and not a Christian invention. The idea that somehow the Church just hasn't noticed yet that people may struggle to live with this particular ideal is just complete nonsense.
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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.
The exegesis is controversial in our days, because the Anglicans and Protestants mucked about with the orthopraxis. (The Orthodox did too, but they don't really count in this context - the exegetical battle largely has been between the different "Western" factions.) As ++Müller points out: "The Church of the Fathers rejected divorce and remarriage, and did so out of obedience to the Gospel. On this question, the Fathers’ testimony is unanimous." As far as RCism goes, that is really the end of the discussion. If the Church Fathers agree unanimously, then that is an infallible teaching of the Church.
I have defended RC teaching on marriage from scripture for example on this thread, it would be a distraction here. FWIW, I think John Piper's explanation of the "exception clause" makes great sense (he's not a Catholic, BTW).
quote:
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.
Right. So when Mother Teresa condemned abortion in no uncertain terms in for example her Nobel Lecture (1979) and her National Prayer Breakfast Speech (1994), that was a simple act out of deep love. But if others do it, it is ideology that pushes away people.
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
A marriage should not be lightly dissolved or easily thrown away.
That's not the point, really. 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. This is actually important. Nobody is saying that people who divorce and remarry are doing so at a whim, or just fake their love, or whatever. No, 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, because these rules are not about what you think, say or do now. They are about what you thought, said and did when you got married. This simply cannot be undone. That's not a comment on how terrible or great thing were and are. The only "quality" under discussion is whether it happened. If it did, then it did, no matter what else.
quote:
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?
Jesus corrected Jewish practice in various ways. Some things He loosened, and some things He tightened. In the case of marriage, He explicitly contradicts the provisions for divorce established by Moses himself, not just of the Pharisees, something unheard of otherwise. So why do you celebrate Christ's modifications of Jewish practice in one case, and not in the other?
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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.
True, but for me largely irrelevant. Let the dead bury their own dead. What I really wonder about is whether Pope Francis would agree with this judgement. I still do not really know how to place him.
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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.
That's an assertion lacking all evidence, of course. And no, I'm not convinced that even the currently catastrophically high numbers of annulments in the USA allows this judgement. First, this is a very recent anomaly, and the RCC cannot be validly judged on just what has occurred in the last few decades. There always have been transient glitches, and this is just a moment on ecclesiastic time scales. Second, these problems do not occur everywhere in the RCC, not even everywhere in the West. Local deviations are nothing new in the Church. Third, this has been in part triggered by the Code of Canon Law of 1983 which has on the subject of marriage traded juridical precision for pastoral inspiration. Basically in the new Canon 1057.2 we have "Matrimonial consent is an act of the will by which a man and a woman mutually give and accept each other through an irrevocable covenant in order to establish marriage." to be compared with the old Canon 1081.2 "Consensus matrimonialis est actus voluntatis quo utraque pars tradit et acceptat ius in corpus, perpetuum et exclusivum, in ordine ad actus per se aptos ad prolis generationem." ("Matrimonial consent is an act of will by which each party gives and accepts right over the body, perpetual and exclusive, ordered to acts which are themselves suitable for the generation of offspring.") Now, clearly the new canon sounds better. But vague law is invariably bad law. By the old definition, if you understood that marriage was fundamentally about having (baby-making-type) sex with each other, then proper matrimonial consent was juridically established. But who knows what the new definition even means? And how many couples have thought through their relationship in terms of a "covenant" before marrying? "We were madly in love and said yes to whatever the priest was going on about" - proper matrimonial consent, or not?
Final point, we are back to the old problem that "hypocritical" has a proper and a common meaning, and they are not the same. In the proper sense, saying things you do not believe in, I think the RCC cannot be accused of being hypocritical (though individual RC priests might be hypocritical in that way). In the common sense of not doing what you preach, this could be claimed (though see my points above). But of course, that tells us nothing about the truth of what is being preached.
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on
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quote:
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.
I'm not sure how the RCC could have rules on divorce and re-marriage at all without being 'ideological'. Even if you say that every case is different, if you want some sort of non-arbitrary resolution of different cases, you need to have some sort of consistent principle to say whether a particular re-marriage is permissible in Christian ethics or not.
I don't agree with the RCC rule, but not because it is ideological. Any good rule is ideological - that is, an expression of a principle that has been properly thought through. The fact that the RCC position is ideological is the most defensible thing about it - because of the ideology, it is possible to know what one is signing up for when one marries in the Catholic Church, what the consequences are, and why those consequences follow.
It would be possible to have the
'rule' on re-marriage be "if you can find someone who'll marry you, and a priest happy to perform the ceremony, go for it" and leave it all the individual consciences. I'd be cool with that, personally*. But it would be a total abdication of the RCC's claims to be the ultimate authority on morals and the proper administration of sacraments, and therefore I think it something most unlikely to happen. I don't think the current Pope is proposing that his church should become an ultra-liberal protestant denomination without ideology - I just think he wants his priests and bishops to think a bit more before saying things that might make them sound like arseholes.
(*for reasons having to do with Christian liberty, the necessity of not enabling the abuse of one party to a marriage repudiating their vows while the other party to theirs , and my reading of scripture that there are at lease some cases where a divorced person is freed from a past marriage - all of which reasons, I'm proud to assert, are ideological)
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
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Ideology can be turned into a slippery term. Clearly the Pope means something different to sound doctrine. I'm guessing he's targetting idealogues (classically defined as blindly partisan supporters of an ideology). Ideology in its classical meaning is a neutral term; a system of ideas and ideals. I think we all have at least one of these in our heads, worked out to some greater or lesser extent. Whether or not we are people of faith.
What bothers a lot of people today is blind partisanship. There are these key expressions in Jesus' woes addressed to religious leaders which touch on the distaste very well. These ones, from Matthew 23
quote:
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.
It is pretty savage stuff, Matthew 23. It suggests to me that the territory of ideologues is the letter rather than the Spirit, leading them up the garden path and encouraging them to lead others the same way. There is this sense of "missing the point" somehow.
I like this quote from Isaac Asimov which gets to the paradox quite nicely.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" (from "Foundation")
Does a letter-based application of sound doctrine ever get in the way of doing the right thing? Or is this just messy liberalism seeking an excuse to avoid a necessary obedience? YMMV on those questions. But I think this Pope seems willing to explore them.
[ 23. October 2013, 23:10: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on
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quote:
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.
The Archbishop is right in affirming the pricipal that the Church cannot , as opposed to will not, change its age old practice that remarried divorcees render themselves excommunicate, but it's perhaps a sign of the future of pastoral care, where he writes:
quote:
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.
That many people today lack a Christian understanding of marriage is an understatement. If non-Catholics marry, or if a Catholic marries a non-Catholic, they may be indeed be influenced by today's mentality. 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.
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. I think this is what the Archbishop was getting at here. Also Pope Francis has indicated that he sees the present system of tribunals as inadequate to deal with the enormous pastoral problem the Catholic Church faces with civil divorce. 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.
quote:
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.
While I don't agree with mousethief that the Catholic Church is being hypocritical with its anulment procedure, I do agree that it's hypocritical to criticise the Orthodox Church on the subject of remarriage. If annulment were a stringent procedure, granted only in special cases, then perhaps. But the trend from the Holy Father, even hinted at by the CDF in the Archbishop's letter, is towards making it easier. 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?
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
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.
You are confusing issues here. Whether marriages are lived by proper Catholic standards is a different questions to whether they are (sacramental) marriages in the first place. Quite generally, a good many Catholics do not follow the teachings of the Church in their lives. That does not stop them from being Catholics though, it simply makes them sinful Catholics.
The key question, as I've pointed out above, is one of sufficient matrimonial consent. What must people sign up for minimally for the marriage to be valid? Again, as mentioned above the old (1917) canon was clear, and by its standard I reckon matrimonial consent would not be an issue today any more than it was yesterday: that married couples have sex with each other of the type that can lead to offspring should be obvious to practically all adults. The new (1983) canon sounds grand, but is wide open to interpretation. How do we tell if the couple was considering the establishment of a covenant and whatnot? So what the Church has done is through vague law make claims about lacking matrimonial consent easy. This is a procedural / legal issue, not primarily a sacramental one, and could be fixed by a simple amendment of the canon.
Of course, this would not by itself change behaviour patterns at odds with Catholic marriage among Catholic married couples. But it would basically remove the easy access route to annulment and restore the proper order of the procedural / legal setting to the sacramental reality: the former must serve the latter, not vice versa.
quote:
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.
I think the first sentences describes the current realities with regrettable accuracy, but you then draw wrong conclusions. Of course it is a problem if "the vows" are not understood in their fullness. But do we require of Catholics to fully understand the Catholic faith in order to be considered Catholics? No, we do not. What has been lost here is a sense of proper perspective, we do not say clearly enough any longer what the fundamental purpose of marriage is in the order of a Catholic life, and hence we cannot say any longer how much understanding of marriage is enough. 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. Is that all that can be said about marriage? Hardly! But canon law is not about the fullness of understanding and holiness, it is about setting appropriate boundaries.
Now, if the change will be to maintain the current confusion and merely to streamline the procedure so that annulments can be granted with even less difficulty, then that very much is against the spirit of the doctrine! For the old rule based on procreation made it very difficult indeed to claim that a marriage was just a delusion based on a misunderstanding, whereas this new streamlined procedure would make that very easy. How can that be what Christ intended? Christ did not at all talk about some super-special path to holiness "indissoluble marriage" that an elect few might attempt. He clearly was reforming the typical marriage of everyday people when he revoked the accommodation of Moses that governed them. It was clearly Christ's intention to challenge all potential couples with this. Canon law must not subvert Divine intentions, or it is in itself sinful.
quote:
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?
Nope. However, hypocritical - or let's be blunt - sinful the RCC may become in streamlining the annulment procedure, be it until Catholic marriage has all the stability of a soap bubble, this remains a qualitatively different failure to that of the Orthodox Churches. It is one thing to subvert a correct doctrine by sinful procedure, it is another thing to adopt wrong doctrine. 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. The Orthodox simply do not have that option.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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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.
[ 24. October 2013, 14:34: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
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.
I've wondered the same, actually. I'm not a canon lawyer, so take the following musings with a shovelful of salt...
First, if it were the case that the new marriage was illicit, because the old one was not rightfully annulled, then this would make the new relationship sinful objectively speaking (a special case of adultery). However, the partners in that relationship would not be culpable for these sins, because they would operate under the reasonable and indeed faithful assumption that their new marriage is valid according to the law of the Church. Instead, these sins would fall back onto the tribunals, canon lawyers and in particular those who wrote the "wonky canon". At which point Christ's saying about millstones makes instant sense. (Can you imagine how much sin potentially could be attributed to the responsible canon law writers? God have mercy on them indeed!)
Second, the Church does have the power to bind and loosen. While that clearly does not extend to the sacrament of marriage as such, it certainly does allow the Church to determine the proper conditions of marriage. So for example, if I tried to marry a first cousin (unless at least three removed, I think...), that would be invalid, no matter how I feel about it. So the "wonky canon" more likely is in fact messing with the ability of people to contract valid marriages. They think they are doing the right thing, but by virtue of the "wonky canon" they are perhaps not, which forms the basis of the annulment later. Thus the sin of fornication would arise in consequence, again however not culpably for the couple, but adding millstones to the neck of the canon law makers.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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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.
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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I dunno. If I had to choose between Roman Catholic marriage, and marriage as it tends to be taken among mainstream Protestants today, I would take the Roman Catholic view any time. In fact, Anglicans stood with Rome on the issue of divorce until very recently.
Believe it or not, Pope Benedict expanded the conditions for annulment. There used to be a canon which dispensed a Catholic from the necessity of marrying in the Church if he had "formally defected" from communion with Rome, which allowed converts to other faiths to contract marriage according to their own rites. Why condemn schismatics to fornication, after all? No more! Which is a real ecumenical pisser, if you ask me.
Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on
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It is always well to be reminded that our 33 year old marriage, which has been exclusive or, if you like, faithful, is utterly condemned by Christians since both of us had previous partners.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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agingjb
I'm in the same boat as you (or would be were my late-lamented still living).
And both of us case aside by our exes - they having being thrown out, me having been left.
Praise be our local PP was a deal more human(e) than either Rome or Canterbury: they asked no questions, they just married us.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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Is that your expectation—that the Church will never question your behavior?
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
BUT. It's not an ideal world.
In an ideal world, Jesus would not have been nailed to a cross,
he comment you make begs the question "where would the world be without Jesus being killed this way?"
Which then leads to all the rest of the atonement discussion. I go to the idea that all can be made right, whatever happens. Which I suppose is ideology.
And then I think of evolution and lessons from science which tells us that our conceptions of the origins of the universe and of life and still, even with all our knowledge, rather primitive.
I do think this pope is on to something more human than several recent predecessors.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
Nobody is required to "tolerate" adultery, it is perfectly acceptable in the RCC to separate over adultery or other grave abuses (and to put matters in order, to divorce civilly). This is tragic, but not sinful. What is not allowed is rather to remarry. So if you consider it to be evil to live in sexual continence (and thus usually as "single" as far as romance is concerned), then you have a choice between evils.
Where the "French" approach is a cultural norm imposed on the couple by social or economical pressure, I'll be the first to condemn it. However, where it is rather a free decision for what is perceived as the lesser evil, I think it is a valid choice under difficult circumstances. And it may in some cases indeed offer more opportunities for healing the marriage than the principled approach of walking out of the door.
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
It also punishes the victim rather than the aggressor who is unlikely to care.
This is attributing the sin to the sacrament, rather than to the sinner. Or possibly, it is attributing a bad choice of partner to the sacrament, rather than to the one who has chosen. What you can attribute to the sacrament fairly is that it requires full dedication of one's life to another person. In consequence, there is no escape from suffering if that person starts to sin. It is a risk you can decide to take, or not. And yes, most people will feel that a considerable price is attached to not taking that risk. There is no doubt that Christ is imposing here an extra cross on basically all of His followers. The apostles saw this as much as we do, and were stunned. Well, I guess Jesus can be demanding and maybe it is worthwhile thinking about why He was particularly demanding about this.
quote:
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.
This assumes that a moral evaluation of potential options is possible here. It isn't. Facts are not moral matter. That we can change from unmarried to married by choice does not mean that we can change from married to unmarried by choice. That we can shatter a glass by pushing it off the table does not mean that we can reassemble the shards into a glass by pushing them around. Some changes are one way only, and marriage is such a change. Other examples are baptism, confirmation and ordination, i.e., all personal "state changes" through sacraments are once and for all.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
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ingo, thank you for taking the time to answer all my -probably woolly--points. Your answers are, of course, well-argued, and I don't feel up to arguing them back.
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?
Someone close in my family believes exactly as you do in following the rules of the Church faithfully and to the letter, even when it is very difficult or painful and might seem impossible. So this is a stance I very much respect. I have seen it in action--not just spoken beliefs, but in real action.
I admire it, but in the end it seems just too rigid and not taking individual circumstances into account.
i agree we shouldn't spend too much time on the divorce/remarriage issue, which is tangential to the discussion about "ideology" as a whole, but I've looked at the previous discussion you linked to about the scriptural basis etc and will read it in more detail later. Suffice it to say that in one place Jesus clearly says "no divorce" and in the other he clearly says "no divorce except in the case of unchastity/immorality." Both are clear statements by Jesus, it seems to me. I don't see why we can't follow the second one, which expands on the first. But I expect you explain why not, on the other thread. (Plus what you have said above about the Fathers' unanimous opinion).
Anyway, if you like, you win. And I admire any Catholic who is ready to follow all the rules through to the bitter end. We just have to agree to differ.
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?)
And you will say, I think, that my individual feelings don't matter. The church can bind and loosen things in heaven and on earth, and that is that.
Your question is interesting--does Pope Francis really agree with Archbishop Müller, despite his media-attention-catching way of talking as if he's going to change things?
Had to know at this point. Maybe he's just calling for a shift of emphasis. So that all Catholics are thought of more as who they are and what they do and give, rather than what doctrines they believe.
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?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
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?
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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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.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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Sometimes I wonder if the whole concept of 'marriage vows' isn't problematic in itself. Wouldn't it be more honest to promote 'marriage hopes'? In fact, do modern people really consider a marriage ceremony an appropriate occasion for vows? Vows are restrictive, but our culture clearly values personal freedom more highly, especially in matters of the heart.
I've heard that some churches hold ceremonies when marriages are dissolved. Perhaps this should happen more often. It seems strange to make such a song and dance about getting married in church, yet when marriages break down everything is entirely secular. It's as though religion (or perhaps mostly Protestantism) can only cope with the jolly, happy things; there's no workable and commonly accepted theology for the other side of life. It's a defective kind of religion.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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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.
Hopefully you will, one day, learn to read what a person actually said before viciously and ignorantly accusing them of saying horrible things.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
But I expect you explain why not, on the other thread.
To briefly summarize Piper's position: The exception clause defends Joseph's original intention to "send away" Mary when she is found pregnant as licit, as can be see from only Matthew reporting both and by his choice of words. This was during their betrothal, and a divorce was required among Jews to get out of it. But you were not supposed to have sex during that time. So the closest match you get in today's terms is a sacramental marriage that has been contracted but not yet consummated. And it is still the case in RC canon law that for just reason (as adultery would be, I assume!) a marriage in that state can be dissolved (though these days you would have to appeal to the pope, but that's a procedural point, not a doctrinal one).
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?)
I doubt that there is as much difference between us as you think. I'm above average informed about doctrines and theology because I am an academic. It's the sort of thing that comes natural to me. But that hardly makes me a saint. Yet when I see myself as weak and lukewarm - and often enough I do - then I do not go ahead and change the measure of faith until I can think of myself as fine. It would be nice if I could say that I change myself until I measure up, but usually that's not the case either. Rather, I simply live with being a failure, and in the case of sin, with the risk of damnation. After all, the only way God can be merciful is if we fall short. (Note though: mercy is not mercy if it is assured, then that's simply a change of rule.)
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?
Sure, but the Holy Spirit was also with the Church in electing Pope Alexander VI. There is no universal protection against bad popes to be had from the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit will protect us against irrevocable, bad doctrine. So Pope Francis will not be allowed to speak nonsense "ex cathedra".
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
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.
I dunno Zach, this is what you posted:
quote:
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.
That does burden the victimized, and I think, is a misuse of ideology or the ideal as something to ideologically flog someone who might indeed be suffering from violence.
Better is to view marital fidelity as something we should aspire to, just like all the other good things we should aspire to. Does God really enjoy such suffering? Better to look to the goal, and try, acknowledging our sinful nature and difficulty making it, and if a marriage fails, to move along and try to find joy again.
It must be remembered that in antiquity until 1-200 years ago or so, people lived rather short lives, and few suffered through decades of awful marriages and the loneliness of decades of being alone like they do today. And of course, women weren't persons, rather were property, in most places until 80 or 90 years ago.
So I'm with L'organist on this one in calling it correctly.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
So I'm with L'organist on this one in calling it correctly.
You're with L'organist in viciously assuming the worst of someone who said, in that post you cited, "Don't mistake my position here—the bible does grant that divorce is acceptable in some situations."?
So, what is your basis assuming that I would advise abused people to remain in dangerous situations when I admitted there could be situations when divorce is acceptable? Oh, I know judging people is fun, but why even put in the effort if you aren't going to set out to be good at it? Sloppy.
Posted by Doublethink (# 1984) on
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If you are going to be personal, take it to hell. I am looking at you, l'organist & zach82
Doublethink
Purgatory Host
[ 25. October 2013, 06:58: Message edited by: Doublethink ]
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
But I expect you explain why not, on the other thread.
To briefly summarize Piper's position: The exception clause defends Joseph's original intention to "send away" Mary when she is found pregnant as licit, as can be see from only Matthew reporting both and by his choice of words. This was during their betrothal, and a divorce was required among Jews to get out of it. But you were not supposed to have sex during that time. So the closest match you get in today's terms is a sacramental marriage that has been contracted but not yet consummated. And it is still the case in RC canon law that for just reason (as adultery would be, I assume!) a marriage in that state can be dissolved (though these days you would have to appeal to the pope, but that's a procedural point, not a doctrinal one). [/QUOTE]
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.
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?)
I doubt that there is as much difference between us as you think. I'm above average informed about doctrines and theology because I am an academic. It's the sort of thing that comes natural to me. But that hardly makes me a saint. Yet when I see myself as weak and lukewarm - and often enough I do - then I do not go ahead and change the measure of faith until I can think of myself as fine. It would be nice if I could say that I change myself until I measure up, but usually that's not the case either. Rather, I simply live with being a failure, and in the case of sin, with the risk of damnation. After all, the only way God can be merciful is if we fall short. (Note though: mercy is not mercy if it is assured, then that's simply a change of rule.) [/QUOTE]
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:
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?
Sure, but the Holy Spirit was also with the Church in electing Pope Alexander VI. There is no universal protection against bad popes to be had from the Holy Spirit. However, the Holy Spirit will protect us against irrevocable, bad doctrine. So Pope Francis will not be allowed to speak nonsense "ex cathedra". [/QUOTE]
Well, we'll have to wait and see how he speaks about specific doctrines, on or off the Chair.
Barnabas: I like what you say, that the Pope seems to be targeting ideologues who follow the letter of the law and miss the whole spirit of it.
That's what I was thinking about with my reference to the man-not made-for-the-Sabbath thing, too.
As Ingo has pointed out, Jesus did loosen some OT laws and tighten others. Everywhere he is calling for high standards, yes, and sometimes higher than OT ones. BUT everywhere he is also calling for us to look at the spirit of a law and not to be blindly partisan ideologues.
He did tell the woman taken in adultery to sin no more, yes; BUT he also showed compassion for her as an individual, and he showed the dangers of setting ourselves in judgement over our fellow humans..."Let him who is without sin cast the first stone...."
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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
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.
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.
quote:
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.
Is it a stretch that Jesus made a "legal" side comment that showed that He was not condemning His foster father's treatment of His mother as sinful, but without mentioning His parents by name? That seems perfectly believable to me. Is it a stretch that the gospel most clearly targeted at Jews records a "legal" side comment of high relevance only to those under Jewish law, but the other gospels do not? That seems perfectly believable to me.
quote:
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.
This comment makes little sense to me. Either the Church is communicating the will of God, or she isn't. If she is, then "the powers that be" are simply acting as messengers of God, and whatever problems you may have cannot be addressed by ignoring these judgements. For in the end you then will face that same judgement by God. Is she isn't communicating the will of God, then that is the real problem, not that you feel particularly bad about what she says.
You may have had your reasons to switch to a different Church, but "I will be considered less of a sinner there" is simply not a good reason at all. Try "that church says what I do is a sin, but based on XYZ I disagree, therefore I should find a church that better represents God's will," that makes some sense. Hopefully you can defend XYZ against the charge that you are merely rationalising your sins.
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
Well, we'll have to wait and see how he speaks about specific doctrines, on or off the Chair.
It is rather unlikely that Pope Francis will speak "ex cathedra" during his pontificate. Papal pronouncements are not usually "ex cathedra", and throughout the entire history of the Church we have had only perhaps a dozen "ex cathedra" declarations.
quote:
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.
Except of course it didn't, since the woman was not told that she could go on with her life as before. The rule against adultery remained firmly in place. What was avoided by Jesus' intervention was killing her over her adultery, which would have made it impossible for her to reform her life before her death. And indeed, the Church never must block all paths to repentance in this life for anyone, no matter who they are and what they have done. That would stand against what Christ does here.
Hence you can use this scripture to condemn for example Arnaud Amalric, or perhaps to argue that even the current critical stance of the RCC against the death penalty is not sufficient yet. But you cannot use it to motivate "bending the rules", if those rules do allow for repentance and reforming one's life.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
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?
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).
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
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.
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.
Of course I don't think there's only one way of being a saint! The wonderful thing is that all sorts of people, temperaments, approaches etc qualify! I just mentioned Mother T as someone whose approach seemed to be about the love rather than the "ideology." I didn't mean to "go on" about her, was just responding to your comments.
quote:
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.
Is it a stretch that Jesus made a "legal" side comment that showed that He was not condemning His foster father's treatment of His mother as sinful, but without mentioning His parents by name? That seems perfectly believable to me. Is it a stretch that the gospel most clearly targeted at Jews records a "legal" side comment of high relevance only to those under Jewish law, but the other gospels do not? That seems perfectly believable to me. [/QUOTE]
Well, we must agree to differ.
quote:
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.
This comment makes little sense to me. Either the Church is communicating the will of God, or she isn't. If she is, then "the powers that be" are simply acting as messengers of God, and whatever problems you may have cannot be addressed by ignoring these judgements. For in the end you then will face that same judgement by God. Is she isn't communicating the will of God, then that is the real problem, not that you feel particularly bad about what she says.
You may have had your reasons to switch to a different Church, but "I will be considered less of a sinner there" is simply not a good reason at all. Try "that church says what I do is a sin, but based on XYZ I disagree, therefore I should find a church that better represents God's will," that makes some sense. Hopefully you can defend XYZ against the charge that you are merely rationalising your sins.[/QUOTE]
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.
quote:
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.
Except of course it didn't, since the woman was not told that she could go on with her life as before. The rule against adultery remained firmly in place. What was avoided by Jesus' intervention was killing her over her adultery, which would have made it impossible for her to reform her life before her death. And indeed, the Church never must block all paths to repentance in this life for anyone, no matter who they are and what they have done. That would stand against what Christ does here. [/QUOTE]
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.
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!
Anyway, I hope it hasn't all been too tangential to the general discussion of what the Pope means by "ideological Christianity" as an "illness which pushes people away."
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
Well, actually it is sort of on topic, if what drove you away is indeed "ideology". I don't know. I really think that there are two possible errors here: either beating people up too much with the truth, or confronting them too little with it. And who can tell what is the "right" amount? As usual, I feel that the pope is too simplistic and is going on only about one side of the issue. Though perhaps that is fair enough if we can say that the previous popes were simplistic and went on only about the other side of the issue. But I'm not sure that one can say that, really…
(I guess I'm morally obliged to point out that the RCC considers ex-RCs to be in a particularly precarious situation as far as salvation is concerned. You probably don't need to hear that from me, but I'm happy to go PM if I am mistaken…)
quote:
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.
If anyone is suggesting to stone the illicitly remarried, I promise to fight them, if need be physically.
quote:
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!
Actually, I think you are commendably open to listening to what is intended as fairly sharp criticism. And for the record, I happily admit to playing the "ideologue" on the Ship, and a fairly no holds barred one at that. I think that that is appropriate to this place. It is not how I approach my everyday interactions with other people, including on matters of faith.
Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Please note:
Everyone thinks their form of religion is non-ideological including atheists
Everyone is wrong.
Jengie
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
quote:
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.
I read what you wrote, which was quote:
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.
And I think therefore it is reasonable to infer that you think marriage vows should be kept at all costs - including by people who are beaten by their spouse.
And in the case of someone who has been abandoned by their spouse, its not the fidelity that's the cross, its the knowledge that someone you love doesn't love you back, doesn't like you and doesn't need you, doesn't want you in their life in any way on any level.
If you have never experienced that you are truly blessed, but please don't talk to those of us who have about bearing a cross.
As for me being vicious: that is untrue and uncharitable; however - if you want to take it to hell I'm more than happy to slug this one out with you there.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
And I think therefore it is reasonable ...
You think wrongly.
[ 25. October 2013, 16:11: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
quote:
posted by Zach82
You think wrongly.
Politeness costs nothing but can yield great reward.
As I said above,I was not vicious - you either owe me an apology or see me in hell...
Posted by TurquoiseTastic (# 8978) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
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.
If anyone is suggesting to stone the illicitly remarried, I promise to fight them, if need be physically.
Well, I'm glad we're all agreed that we shouldn't do that. But isn't the point about why we shouldn't do that?
Actually the Old Testament law did not merely allow the woman to be stoned - it commanded that she must be put to death (OK, not necessarily by stoning). And there is even a justification given: "You must purge the evil from Israel".
But Jesus does not give the impression that he is saying "OK, previously it would have been fine, indeed praiseworthy, to stone the woman: but now I'm telling you something different". He seems to be saying: "Seriously guys, you already know this is the wrong thing to do."
So this is not just an example of "better pastoral care", it is indeed overriding the rules as Cara suggests. Not all the rules, but at least some of the rules.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
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?
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).
So your claim that marriage is "once and for all" is bullshit.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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.
I agree. I think that's at the core of criticism of ideological Christianity.
Irrespective of the theory, which I can follow, even though I don't agree with it, I also can't see how one regard a person as either still married to someone who has meanwhile married someone else, or as expected to behave as though they were, even though self-evidently they are not.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Jengie Jon:
Everyone thinks their form of religion is non-ideological including atheists
I think you're using the wrong word to say a true thing.
A true thing - that we all bring preconceived ideas to any discussion, and none of us are innocent of wanting others to behave as our principles would have them behave.
The wrong word, because if all religious positions are ideological then you've used the word in such a way as to empty the Pope's statement of any content. Whereas it seems that most of us are finding some meaning in what he said.
I find with this Pope that I'm more conscious that English is not his first language; you may have good precedent for your usage, it just doesn't help us get at what he's saying.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on
:
Host Hat On
Zach82, L'organist
By sniping at one another after Doublethink's Host Post, you are ignoring a Hostly instruction, which is a Commandment 6 transgression and can get you in hot water with Admin. No more sniping in Purgatory. Take your differences to Hell.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
Host Hat Off
[ 27. October 2013, 15:14: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
Sorry, Barnabas62.
I did try to get to H**l but - it didn't happen.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
I seen 'im! Larse night!! I was THERE. Lucky me.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
quote:
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
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.
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).
I applaud the clarity of your language and analysis that illustrates so well the type of thinking that the Pope is condemning.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on
:
quote:
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.
Thanks, Russ. My thoughts entirely.
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.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
Thank-you Russ. Excellent post.
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.
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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
What about it?
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
Russ, I also agree with you.
Meanwhile, can anyone explain to me in a way that is non-circular and persuasive, why it is maintained that if marriage is a sacrament, then that makes it ontologically indissoluble, rather than wrong, sinful or faithless to break the bond? It's not an automatic sequitur. Sadly, there are plenty of people who are baptised who are not faithful Christians or are even wilfully apostate. Likewise, it's clear from observation, that adultery and other forms of serious and wilful breaches of faith, destroy marriages. I said earlier in this thread,
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.
IngoB gave the official answer to that, by saying that a divorced person can always live a single life, but that is not persuasive. As quetzalcoatl said, that is not being faithful to the dumper, but to something abstract, i.e. living ones life by faith in an ideology or a doctrine rather than God.
It is also treating ethics as though they were a sort of Torah.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
The Lord walked on water, but declared marriage to be indissoluble. The laws of physics are like nothing to their Maker, but if He speaks the word on marriage, then that just is. You are simply forgetting who the Boss is in all matters, including human ones.
quote:
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).
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". You have no proper mercy there at all. Without just condemnation, no merciful pardon is possible. You have license. And 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. If you "remarry", then ask for God's mercy for your weakness. Don't go around pretending that all is fine, and don't require of the Church a seal of approval for what you are doing. Mercy is not license.
quote:
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.
Do you seriously believe that the pope will change a single thing about what I have said? Not that he has the slightest power to do so anyway, of course, but do you seriously believe that he will attempt to do that?
What you apparently desperately desire is ... the white lie. Or perhaps its posh cousin, the morally admissible mental reservation. But the problem with the (modern) Jesuit "expedient means" approach has always been this: they are not the ones calling the shots. God is. The pope is the vicar of Christ, he is not Christ.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
I wonder which phrases in the bible attributed to Jesus are his actual words and which aren't. Was Jesus speaking always for all people in all times? was he speaking about marriage to people whose life expectancy was optimistically perhaps 30? (assuming they got out of infancy without dying)
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.
“My God, what a shit God is!" (Evelyn Waugh quoting Randolph Churchill). [T]he Bible is a record of attempts to make God out of the sometimes morally ugly images of humanity.... no inspiration takes the human out of the productive process."
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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
The Lord did NOT declare marriage indissoluble.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
Less humane, I suppose. This isn't Star Trek.
And the pope, I'm happy to say, can think whatever he wants about this. He can neither change the Divine rules, nor the magisterial teaching that arose from it. He can fiddle with the procedural interface to accommodate the Zeitgeist, but that's it. The pope is not King, he is vicar.
quote:
Originally posted by no Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The Lord did NOT declare marriage indissoluble.
He sure did. What you meant to say is something like "My self-defeating approach of making my personal judgement of scripture my personal rule of faith allows me to misinterpret a side comment in Matthew against the clear sense of both the rest of the passages in Matthew as well as multiple other, abundantly clear, statements in scripture. In doing so I happily ignore the unequivocal witness of the early Church, which both remembered more of the Lord's teaching than is written down in scripture and was sent the Holy Spirit for guidance, and instead follow my Protestant role models whose heresy from the beginning conveniently accommodated the violation of Divine rules on matters of intimate relationships. And nothing on earth or in heaven will be able to shake me from these convictions, as postmodernism in its abject idiocy was right about exactly one thing: a text like the bible cannot on its own determine "truth", and the claim that it does merely leads to the hidden projection of one's own preferences onto the text. And since I base my very faith in its width and depth on such hidden projection of my personal preferences, all discussion with me is perfectly futile."
Roughly. But I admit that your version is way snappier.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
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.
And for their authority primarily they are using writings from the 1st and 2nd century that (a) are reporting what someone said - in other words "hearsay"- and (b) were in any case the views of someone else who was not married, never (so far as we are aware) intended to be married and whose only experience of the institution was from a child's standpoint; moreover, if one accepts the Virgin Birth then the parental marriage of which he had experience was far from the norm.
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on
:
quote:
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.
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?
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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?
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.
Posted by Mark Betts (# 17074) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:
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?
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.
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.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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.
I agree, but who on this thread is defending the 'vague, fuzzy "anything goes, God doesn't care" attitude of today'? I'm not seeing any of that, rather it seems people are simply criticising the RCC position, at least as it's being expounded by IngoB.
Posted by Ad Orientem (# 17574) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
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.
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?
I miss Benedict XVI.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Mark Betts:
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:
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?
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.
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.
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?
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
quote:
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.
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.
That "til death us do part" bit that is usually part of marital vows? For some it is a vow and promise. For others, apparently it is a threat.
The point of the asunder line is that marriage should not be taken lightly, and in a culture where a divorced woman might be destitute, starve and die, it is a very bad thing. We "miss the mark" on most of the ideals of God, Jesus and everyone who encourages us to do right. We should try to keep marriages going, but we may fail. Just like we fail at pretty much everything.
I am married for 3 decades so can't speak from personal experience. But apparently half the married world divorces. Like abortion, no one is really in favour of divorce, and no-one enters into it lightly (except in Las Vegas apparently). Anyone with a strict legalistic approach to human problems; well that's why we have Jesus and don't just continue with legalistic Judaism.
"Sorry God, I have sinned and missed the mark. Tthe world is broken, and my world is broken. Please help me, please forgive me. Please give me relief from my suffering".
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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?
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
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.
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.
Believe what you like, but is that belief biblical? The biblical faith is what the Christian Church is concerned with.
quote:
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.
You are of course free to reject teachings of the Bible and the Church and concoct any ethics of sexuality you like. You just can't delude yourself that such a belief is Christian without either the Bible or the Church.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
IngoB wrote:
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.
You are using some odd terms here. For example, that it is 'OK' to end a marriage. Where have I said that? From working with people going through divorce, it is often a bloody nightmare for them, all the pain and grief and guilt. So 'OK' does not really cover it.
Also, 'outlived its usefulness'. Have I said that? I'm not sure how a marriage is useful really, well, I suppose you could argue that it is. Again, my experience is not that couples look at each other and make that argument. It often emerges out of great unhappiness and loneliness and despair and other stuff.
'a desperate attempt to claim the moral high ground' - is it? I don't really get that.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Believe what you like, but is that belief biblical? The biblical faith is what the Christian Church is concerned with.
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Believe what you like, but is that belief biblical? The biblical faith is what the Christian Church is concerned with.
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.
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."
[ 30. October 2013, 16:27: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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."
Zach, you are indeed lucky that in your world such circumstances are "singularly few."
Here are some of the divorces in my extended family:
- husband had a child with another woman during the marriage
- husband left wife (with infant child) for wife's best friend (the friend was also married, her husband also divorced her)
- husband had repeated affairs with no discretion, to the point that mistresses would publicly mock the wife (x2, although one has just separated and not yet divorced)
All of the above women were told by Christian relatives and friends that seeking divorce in their situations was wrong. Do you agree?
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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Just LOVE the consistent assumption that anyone who believes divorce is wrong is just ignorant of how the real world works.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
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.
Maybe you can help in clarifying.
Either your definition for justified divorce is narrower than that of Jesus - which is sexual immorality - or you think that marital infidelity is much rarer than it actually is. Which one is it?
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.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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quote:
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.
Jesus states many things, and we debate them because they are not clear. When people suggest they are clear, often they neglect the context.
That said, the "policy change" to which you refer, I think you're talking of the ideology this pope speaks of.
I think it is profoundly incorrect to say marriages "outlive their usefulness". Usefulness has nothing whatever to do with marital breakdown.
They breakdown in extreme sorrow and pain, with grave and severe personal costs. What people really want is love. The Love of Christ to enter into human troubles, and not what you're discussing.
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on
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This thread has become sadly illustrative of the very illness the Pope was lamenting.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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I'm still reminded of a dear friend who was divorced by her husband because he'd discovered / decided (not sure which or both) he was homosexual.
As a good catholic she was anti divorce, as a woman she was devastated - I mean, how complete a rejection can you give anyone but decide you prefer someone of your own, i.e. not their, sex?. 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.
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?
My friend never remarried: her husband did and he and his partner have 2 surrogate children.
So who loses out?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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Odd that it's usually the woman that has the suffering.
A bit like the Jewish women whose husbands are happy to go off but refuse a religious divorce to their ex-wives.
I am so sorry for your friend, l'organist. (Me, I'd have done a Henry 8, and gone off to another church, but I'm non-conformist to the core.) Surely, if the husband was proved to be homosexual, the marriage could be argued never to have existed.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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Dunno, PennyS, she just drifted away from the rest of us and was last heard of living in the Canary Islands - alone.
Her situation was not as rare as you might think: I know of (not friends but have heard of) at least 2 other women who've had the same experience.
The only link seems to be that in all cases the husband was religious - and of the partnership the MORE religious of the two. Maybe it was something to do with not being able to face being gay because the church was against it?
Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on
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quote:
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.
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. In 1917, civil divorces were rare by modern standards, and annulments, presumably rarer. Although divorces grew in each decade of the 20th century, it was when people were exposed to the many times divorced Hollywood legends like Carey Grant of Elizabeth Taylor, and 60's culture gave us Bob Dylan saying;
Old lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex they dare
To push fake morals insult and stare
that divorce began to grow exponentially, and the Church realised that it had a major pastoral problem on its hands. That God is unchaging, if eternal, is a given, but perhaps our perception of Him changes over time. The Catholic Church realised this in the Aggiornimento, and in the Second Vatican Council, in which many of the Church's hardest pronouncements from a feudal age were "modified" to meet the demands of the global era, and where ecumenism was given due consideration for the first time. I personally thank God for that.
The Holy Father said, in his now famous in flight inteview,
quote:
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.”
This is an off the cuff version of what Archbishop Muller has said in a more considered way. IMO it's no good telling people that they can participate in the life of the Church, go to Mass, or Adoration, get involved, but not receive the sacraments. 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?
Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on
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quote:
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.
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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quote:
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?
The husband.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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No He didn't. And I'm using His cultural Aramaic technique of hyperbole (you are not, you are simply literally WRONG on at least two counts IngoB). Just as Paul recognized. Paul had no problem faithfully making it up as he went along. Just as we must today with gay marriage.
There is no weird Platonic ideal form marriage 'in heaven' with our feeble contracts as shadows on the wall.
The question is rightly asked and comes down to Kipling's five serving men: who, what, why, where, when.
Jesus. His 1500 year culture (a culture that was more humane in the Bronze age - Exodus 21:7-11 - than you now). The Jews. The Pharisees. Their abuse of divorce. Justice. Truth. Openness. Accountability. Faith. Hope. Charity. Mercy. Grace. Compassion. Forgiveness. Jerusalem. 2000 years ago.
What Jesus forbad in Matthew 5:31 is divorce on demand and remarriage in that context. If He meant His hyperbole, to which you ignore the two obvious exceptions, in which He typically extrapolates from one extreme to another, what right did Paul have to abrogate it? To accommodate being divorced, abandoned, driven out by non-Christian partners and remarrying?
Paul's abrogation is itself abrogated by situations he didn't envisage.
As Brian says in his eponymous Life, work it out. With grace, understanding, wisdom. Not one size fits all ever decreasing, meaningless, arbitrary, unreal legalism AKA ideological Christianity.
[ 30. October 2013, 21:13: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
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.
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.)
quote:
Originally posted by seekingsister:
1 Cor 7 - Paul also says divorce is OK if a Christian is abandoned by an unbelieving spouse.
These regulations of St Paul (Pauline privilege) and their further outworkings ("Petrine privilege") of course remain in full effect in the RCC. After all, St Paul explicitly states that the Lord commands this, and unless one wishes to claim that he is lying this is hence Divine law. As is what St Paul declares as the general rule in the name of the Lord, to which these are specific exceptions: namely that couples should not divorce and remarry, though they can separate (1 Cor 7:10-11).
quote:
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?
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.
quote:
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.
In fact, this is the basis for one interpretation of what the exception clause is actually about. To quote myself: Namely, the exception clause applies to the divorce only, and is hence inserted directly after divorce is mentioned, but does not apply to the remarriage, and is hence inserted before that. The meaning is therefore not "whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, except in the case of unchastity." Rather it is an unfortunately compacted form of "whoever divorces his wife commits adultery, except for unchastity, in which case whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery."
But how can a man be said to commit adultery by merely divorcing his wife? Jesus has previously stated the reason: "But I say to you that every one who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery." in Matthew 5:32. And indeed there are apparently variant codices that have "makes her commit adultery" rather than "commits adultery" also in Matthew 19:9. The idea is simply that by sending his wife away, the man leaves her with little choice - in that time and place - but to hook up with another man and thereby become an adulteress. There was no proper place for a single adult woman in that society. The man hence is reckoned responsible and culpable for her future adultery. Only if the woman actually was unchaste already, then the man does not cause her adultery in sending her away. So an even better gloss of Matthew 19:9, in the light of 5:32, would be "whoever divorces his wife is the proximate cause of her adultery, except if she has been unchaste, in which case divorce is licit but not remarriage, for that would be the direct cause of his own adultery."
quote:
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.
"The Church" most definitely did not tell her that she had sinned, for there is no basis for that claim in what you have said. Ignorant members of the Church may well have accused her of sinning, and the same or other members of the Church may well have given her a hard time, pretending that this is spiritual encouragement. I'm not in the business of defending random Catholic assholes on a "holier than thou" trip, be they laity, hierarchy, or popes. I'm in the business of defending official Church teaching. And for that matter, only here, which IMHO is an appropriate place for such discussions.
quote:
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?
I do not have sufficient information to judge the case. If both husband and wife at the time of marriage were baptized, sufficiently aware of the commitments of marriage, and if there were no other impediments - then yes, sure, the marriage remains indissoluble by any human means. The mere fact that the husband has turned to gay adultery does not change that. It may well be though that the later homosexuality of the husband indicates that he never really intended to have a Catholic marriage, i.e., an intimate relationship with a women ordered to procreation. In that case, the marriage would be invalid and could be annulled. If the priest is trustworthy and the consulted canon lawyer competent, and if the full details of the case were presented to them, then their judgement is likely to be accurate though.
quote:
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?
By the standards of the world, or by the standards of God? Perhaps you forget that another belief I hold is the existence of eternal hell as punishment for unrepentant, mortal sinners. Oh, and I also believe in a hierarchy of heaven, where greater merit in this life is repaid by greater eternal reward. Neither is heaven egalitarian, nor is it universal. This woman apparently stayed true to her Catholic faith under circumstances that would have crushed many. Her eternal reward likely will be great. Her husband will have to reform his life, or his eternal punishment is likely to be great.
quote:
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.
I made a specific point about the canons on marital consent in the 1983 vs. the 1917 code. To turn this into some general recommendation of turning back the clock to 1917 is just plain misrepresentation.
quote:
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
This is an off the cuff version of what Archbishop Muller has said in a more considered way.
Indeed, this pope needs to be stripped of all cuffs. But as for the content: in this particular case, I do agree. A good many Catholic marriages now must be considered just as doubtful as the general Catholic understanding of the couple. That's however not an occasion for pumping out even more annulments. It's an occasion for significantly tightening up Catholic marriage preparations, until we can be reasonably sure that every Catholic couple knows exactly what they get into when marrying.
quote:
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?
Perfect contrition removes mortal sin even prior to absolution. It is only perfect if it includes a desire for the sacrament of confession, but if this is not available (here for special reasons), then that is not the fault of the penitent. But yes, it would be valuable to think about the possibility of a "partial" confession (one that excludes the remarriage). However, it is far from clear to me that a corresponding "partial" absolution is even possible (and if it is, that it is desirable).
quote:
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.
Seriously?!? That's the sort of bullshit argument I expect from a Protestant, frankly, not from a Catholic. I have explained so many times on these boards that being ordered to procreation does not mean resulting in procreation or even expected to result in procreation... Please inform yourself about these basics of Catholic doctrine. Suffice to point out that I was precise in what I said: "rights to the sort of activity - sex - that leads to procreation". The highlighted qualifier does the work there.
quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Paul had no problem faithfully making it up as he went along.
1) Bullshit. 2) You are not St Paul.
You invoke grace. You have no need for grace. You make Christianity up as you go along with the world. And you are the judge of how well you are doing. There's no grace required as your will is done on earth as in heaven, and consequently I doubt that God is giving you any (at least for talking about scripture and doctrine).
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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quote:
Seriously?!? That's the sort of bullshit argument I expect from a Protestant, frankly, not from a Catholic.
It's really sad that you think in terms of "Right" vs. "Protestant."
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
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You may be surprised Zach, but some of us aren't.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
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quote:
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.)
I find your response interesting, especially in the context of the passage that follows the divorce verses, on the nature of eunuchs.
Jesus says "For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others--and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."
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.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
You are simply forgetting who the Boss is in all matters, including human ones.
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
)
quote:
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".
Don't agree. When we find ourselves in that place where there are no good choices then we need God's mercy even while doing the best we can.
quote:
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.
That's right. There is no mercy without discretion. For the law to allow for the possibility of mercy, it has to leave space for discretion.
Which ISTM means couples have no right to God's blessing on their second-attempt marriages. But neither are they necessarily condemned to exclusion from the sacramental life of the church community. Leaving it up to the parish priest allows for mercy to be shown. Or not. At his discretion.
If a Hollywood starlet on her seventh marriage has a right to be remarried in church, that's licence.
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 ?
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 ?
quote:
The pope is the vicar of Christ, he is not Christ.
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.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
You are simply forgetting who the Boss is in all matters, including human ones.
Don't think His Bossness is in question; the issue here is when human interpretation of what God wants becomes an ideology.
Yep. And a total lack of humility of the "well this interpretation could be wrong" variety. Oh wait it's the Catholic Church. Theirs and mine both claim to have the ability to change God's mind for Him.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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I'm wondering about the legalistic approaches taken by Pharisees in Jesus' day after reading very rational, but devoid of humanity defences of traditional ideological Roman catholicism. Does this god enjoy suffering? Needs the painful energy of marital martyrs's sorrow? These sorts of ideas are nothing like the pastoral care I have heard about from RC clergy. Which involves some of the real world.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
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quote:
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?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
IngoB, I phrased what I wrote with care for a reason. I don't go round using words like demonspawn for nothing. I wasn't talking about someone losing it all, but having it violently reft from them. 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. I don't think a sacrifice can be made by compulsion. It has to be freely offered. (And not offered because of the fear of new relationships and new opportunities for hurt.)
And where someone has already been a victim of the sort of mind games which have made them believe themselves to be bound, they are going to be particularly vulnerable to extensions of the religious teachings that were used in that manipulation.
Moreover, in a situation where there is a possibility of an actual relationship with an actual person, making that enforced choice to pursue celibacy means that other person is also involved, also bound, without any choice at all, so another person is to be hurt.
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. And I'm not using "love" here in the soppy or erotic sense. If it is the highest expression of love to walk away from a person and deny them companionship and affection because of something which someone else did to you, and which that new person had nothing to do with, apart from offering an unconditional love, that's not deserving of being called storge, agape, or philia (leaving eros out of it).
[ 31. October 2013, 18:15: Message edited by: Penny S ]
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
no prophet: These sorts of ideas are nothing like the pastoral care I have heard about from RC clergy.
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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
It's really sad that you think in terms of "Right" vs. "Protestant."
You are keeping bad doctrinal company, so don't complain if you get tarred with the same brush. The Tiber is there for you to swim across, your splish-splashing about in demonstrations of swimming prowess and marvels of diving interest nobody. Well, at least certainly not me.
As for the concrete case, a Protestant can make these arguments (and on SoF they frequently do). A Catholic cannot, because arguing like that shows that they have not understood even the most basic principle of their Church's teaching on the matter.
quote:
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.
You forget Matt 19:11. This is in response to the disciples complaining that this call to indissoluble marriage is too hard. Christ answers: well, some are are called to indissoluble marriage (Matt 19:11), others are called to sexual continence (Matt 19:12). He gives no other option! And it is really important to look at what Christ lists there as to how you can get "called" to sexual continence. For only the last of His three points is what we would understand today as a proper "calling to a vocation". But Christ is explicitly not limiting this to intentional decisions. He is saying that if nature rendered you incapable of sex, or if other people did so, then you are called to be a "eunuch". The equivalent teaching on marriage is spelled out by St Paul in 1 Cor 7:2-9. Note that St Paul is not talking about any glorious intentions for marriage. He is saying: if you are horny, get married. This is like the first reason for becoming an "eunuch". At any rate when Christ says "he who is able to receive this, let him receive it," the implied failure mode is not "and if not, let him do whatever he wants." The implied failure mode is simply "or be hard of heart, an adulterer" (Matt 19:8-9). That Christ's calls falls on deaf ears does not establish a morally viable third option.
Now, while I assume that Christ's second reason for becoming an Eunuch was a description of men actually having their testicles destroyed by others, this is close to our problem here. The unfaithful spouse dumping their partner and moving on leaves an "eunuch" who has been made an "eunuch" by that spouse. This is glaring injustice, of course, but it nevertheless then becomes a call by God to bear this cross. The sin of others does not establish license, two wrongs do not make a right.
quote:
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 ?
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.
quote:
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 ?
Canon law cannot contradict doctrine, only serve it. Your law does contradict doctrine, and hence simply plays a different game.
quote:
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.
Changing the Church's teaching on marriage is not an institutional issue. It is doctrinal. 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. That is not to say that no accommodation of the "remarried" is possible. If you want to argue about for example "partial absolution" then I will listen with interest. But there just is no give in the doctrines about marriage itself.
quote:
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.
Not for some "obscure priestly reason", but by direct Divine command. I really have no idea where this attitude comes from, that God would only demand of us what is nice and easy and fair. Where is that in the bible then? I don't see it in the OT, and I sure as heck do not see it in the NT, the protagonists of which mostly end up getting slaughtered for their faith in various interesting ways. Did St Peter deserve this? Do you think he enjoyed that?
The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church … which turns out to be a kindergarten. Right.
quote:
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.
All you are doing here is to take some piece of scripture that you like and then you interpret it as you like, and all contrary scripture or tradition or anything else really be damned. You … play … God. It's dangerous business, playing God.
quote:
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.
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… After all, people just hated the reactionary old days.
(Unfair? Probably… Still, I tire of this stern demand for mollycoddling. If you want that, and if your local RC priest gives you that, then why the blazes do you demand it of me here? I never had the slightest intention to serve in any pastoral position, and I am not here to win converts.)
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Well that's a relief.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
... Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion....
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
... Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion....
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.
Fair enough. I agree that Christian morality must be founded in faith and obedience and not abstract, universalized ethical principles. But then I ask "Faith and obedience in what?
Naturally, as a Protestant, I answer "In the teaching of the Church found in the Scriptures."
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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.
Yes and yes! Unbending ideologues (or committed holders to the truth, if you prefer) can be found across the denominations.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion..
Overstated in the extreme. 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. For example an untruth told to escape detention and torture, which is something my grandfather did getting out of Hitler's Germany. He engaged in false witness and the family got out.
Or the young man I spoke to today who denied to his friend that he reported him to the police, and then the police showed up and seized the friend's firearms, escorting him to hospital. He also sacrificed the truth apparently for whim and fashion.
Pray tell how blindly must we continue in Kohlberg's stage 4 of 'conventional morality'?* Can Roman catholics not reason at more mature levels?**
* do an internet search if you don't know about this
** rhetorical question. Yes they can, but obviously not all of them.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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Three in one there ...
Posted by PaulTH* (# 320) on
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quote:
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.
Pope Francis, from the OP link;
quote:
“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?”
Jesus minsitered to the marginalised such as the ritually unclean, who were unable to receive forgiveness of sins from the Temple authorities. He assured them that they were forgiven. For much of its history, the Church has acted like the Temple in Jesus' day. 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. As someone who values piety over ideology, and the great mystics of the Church over Scholasticism I like the way Pope Francis is shaping up. An ideology which chases people away and distances them from the Church is an illness.
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. No one wants to see a "stupid stunt." The Church can't accept remarrige. But in convening this Extraordinary Synod next year, the Pope wants more to be done to keep these sinners in the Church, and prevent them leaving. 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
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion.
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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Oh Lord, let's keep the pseudo-psychology out of it.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
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…
Yes. I have seen the good fruits of Vatican II with my own eyes. And I am very impressed by them.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
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In case you're wondering, like I was, what PPDNOS is: the Wikipedia explanation
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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quote:
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]
I'd put it more bluntly than that. I'd say that,
Rigid rules are a convenient tool that enables you to let yourself off having to address the problems that real humans throw up.
quote:
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.
That demonstrates a profoundly Protestant world view.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
IngoB: Once you abandon principle, your rules do become arbitrary and their morality becomes a matter of whim and fashion.
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.
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.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
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?
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
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?
"Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Matt 5:17-19
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
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.
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.
"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
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
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.
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.
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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
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
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
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
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.
Good Lord, the way people cry "proof-texting!" these days, the Bible would be completely irrelevant to every theological discussion.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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But proof-texting can be used as a substitute for argument.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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quote:
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.
So I've noticed.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
quetzalcoatl: maturity brings an increasing tolerance of grey.
I think this is sometimes necessary. *Looks worryingly at the first signs of colour change in his hair*
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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quote:
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
Everyone knows that Revelation should have been left out of the bible. They messed up with that one. Blame Irenaeus.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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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.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
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.
There's a word for that. Not a nice one.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
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.
There's a word for that. Not a nice one.
It can't be worse than the word for writing off people who disagree with you as immature and mentally ill, can it?
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on
:
quote:
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 ?
To the extent that such a rule expresses a consistent and clear doctrine about marriage and coherent ethical principles, it 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.
It's stupid to object to Catholicism on the grounds that it is ideological. An organisation that claims to have divinely ordained authority to teach doctrine and ethics can go in two directions: it can be ideological, or it can be arbitrary. Ideology is not only the better option, but the obviously better option.
Object to Catholicism because it is wrong by all means, but even then, be grateful that it is ideological, because the fact that Catholic teaching works damned hard at getting the principles it uses consistent and clear makes it possible for the rest of us to argue against something which has real substance. An organisation claiming divine inspiration but having no ideology couldn't be the subject of meaningful argument at all, because there would be no underlying principles to argue about.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
The former is obvious. I do consider you heretic, after all, not pagan.The latter… well, I'm glad that you say so. What is the reason then? Bad habit? Insufficient knowledge? Acedia?
quote:
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.
Sorry, the risks of millstones around my neck are getting too high there.
quote:
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.
Sure, and I happily agree with this most orthodox teaching. The other side of that orthodox teaching however is of course the requirement for sincere repentance on the human side.
quote:
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
The bishops and the pope can impose discipline and adapt doctrine, and potentially derive "new" doctrine from the existing deposit of faith, but they cannot fundamentally change existing doctrine or invent new doctrine at will. There are some judgement calls involved in saying what is what, but in fact the RC doctrinal systems is geared to making those relatively easy. There are tight limits there in the RCC, and no amount soppy fawning over Jesus will make them go away. Thank God, and I'm pretty sure that Jesus is happy about that, too…
quote:
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.
Really?!
Just how low are you willing to sink?
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
That demonstrates a profoundly Protestant world view.
Argue your case, if you can. Perhaps you just suffer from a profoundly Protestant misunderstanding of what the RCC is about?
quote:
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.
Mental illness, immaturity, what's next I wonder?
The problem here is a much more fundamental one. For you and others like you, faith is functionally equivalent to opinion. For me and others like me, faith is functionally equivalent to fact.
Now, can we imagine this entire discussion centred not on the indissolubility of marriage, but on the existence of Australia? What would you think if someone insisted on grey areas about the existence of Australia? Would that be a sign of a sound mind? Of maturity? Or wouldn't your rather say "WTF are you talking about? Of course, Australia exists. Here's a globe, it's right there. The news earlier today had a piece about them electing their Prime Minister. Talk to James over there, he is from Australia. Or book a flight to Australia. Yes, this is pure 'black and white', Australia exists. Get real."
Of course there is plenty of room for grey areas given the existence of Australia. Should Australians enjoy automatic residency in the UK? Does the Australian accent sound horrible? Are Australians overly fixated on sports? Should there be a free trade agreement with Australia? And so on. People can have all sorts of opinions on all sorts of matters pertaining to Australia. But they cannot have different opinions on whether it exists, validly. It does. Fact. End of discussion. Black and white, no grey at all.
Now, my Catholic faith is in some aspects (by far not in all!) functionally equivalent to facts. I defend the indissolubility of marriage in much the same spirit as I would defend the existence of Australia (assuming that there would be some people who for some reason have doubts on the matter). To accuse me about being "black and white" about that is hence at most an indication for me that I have not managed to clear up the mistaken grey that those unfortunately less informed have. Just as I can admit that pointing to a globe may not on its own convince the Australia-doubter.
But if you say that this rather is a fundamental "mental problem" of mine (whether due to mental illness or retarded development), then I answer that fundamentally you have no faith at all. And that is that, as far as I am concerned.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: Really?!
Just how low are you willing to sink?
Can we get over the sissy-fit faux-offendedness? Being able to deal with ambivalence of rules is part of human maturation. 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.
To me, it seems perfectly acceptable to discuss this. I haven't said that anyone on this thread has PDD-NOS; in fact I've actually denied saying this. 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?
quote:
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.
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?!
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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?!
Well said, LeRoc; your whole post but particularly what I've quoted.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
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. Obviously that is not the case. My point was that attributing mental illness or developmental retardation merely to seeing certain matters of faith "black and white" is in outright contradiction to what I consider faith to be. To me, being "black and white" about certain things hoped for and unseen exactly is faith. If that is dysfunctional, then I wear that label with pride. And anyone who claims to be all shades of grey about Christianity in my eyes has no faith in Christ whatsoever. None.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Can we get over the sissy-fit faux-offendedness?
I can't help thinking about fuckwittery here. I've been trained in working with adults who are fuckwits, and both in theory and in practice I've learned that speaking in this way is a strong indicator of this condition.
I'm not saying that you or any other posters on this thread are fuckwits (or that this would necessarily be a bad thing), but it is a fact of life that in most situations one should not attribute mental illness to others. And most of us are able to argue without that.
<For hostly reference, I'm spoofing this post to make a point, without being in a particularly hellish mood.>
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Being able to deal with ambivalence of rules is part of human maturation.
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?
quote:
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.
I know the Book of Lamentations. I also know a pseudo-diagnosis for rhetorical purposes when I hear one. There is quite literally not a single indicator of PDDNOS that would apply to me. If you knew the first thing about my life, you would know that. But hey, you don't. And you didn't bother asking either. So please don't pretend that you are speaking from some kind of objective or professional place here. This was simply a bit of nasty rhetoric, in particular so if you actually had some "psychological training". The one and only appropriate thing for you to do here would be to apologise.
quote:
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?
Well, in the end of course you get to define who you are by the boundaries that you set yourself. And the same is true for me.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: <For hostly reference, I'm spoofing this post to make a point, without being in a particularly hellish mood.>
You're illustrating my point perfectly! You're making a comparison to get your point across, like I was doing before and like I said you are doing on the Ship.
FWIW I wouldn't have a problem at all if you compared some of the things I've said on the Ship with the behaviour of someone who is a fuckwit. It would give me a chance to explain why my post isn't fuckwittery.
My proposal is that both of us will be allowed to use comparisons in our argumentation, and both of us will also try to avoid jumping to conclusions because of these comparisons. Deal?
quote:
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?
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.
quote:
IngoB: I also know a pseudo-diagnosis for rhetorical purposes when I hear one.
Oh, I'd never claim to be a psychologist or a psychiater so they truly are pseudo-diagnoses. And once again, I'm not trying to diagnose you. I'm only commenting on a similarity I'm seeing.
I have worked with these teenagers for a long time. It wasn't my task to diagnose them, but I have been professionally trained in dealing with their behaviour. A large part of this traing —specifically and explicitly— was taking into account their difficulties in dealing with ambivalent rules.
So, what do you do when you're working with children/teenagers with PDD-NOS? You try to remove ambivalence from your rules and communication. Clarity of rules gives them a sense of security. I can point to countless psychological websites that give this advice.
I'm not saying that all people who are unable to deal with ambivalent rules have PDD-NOS. Hey, I like me a clear rule myself too from time to time. 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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Deal?
No deal. Stop justifying your misbehaviour by alleging that I do something similar. Even if it were so, that does not get you off the hook.
quote:
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.
Go ahead then, tell us what the middle is between principle and arbitrariness / whim / fashion, as far as the drafting of rules is concerned.
quote:
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.
It was just a random factoid mentioned by chance, was it?
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: No deal.
Take it or leave it.
quote:
IngoB: It was just a random factoid mentioned by chance, was it?
Of course it wasn't.
quote:
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.
Oh boy, almost the whole of human experience. Sonny-boy should to be in bed by seven o'clock but today we'll make an exception. Little Lily wasn't supposed to play with felt-tip pens yet, but she made a beautiful drawing! Maybe we should revise this rule. Peter reacted strongly to his teacher, but maybe she was provoking him too...
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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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I think the notion of pre-ambivalence is tied up with a schematic approach to reality in various areas of life. Thus some approaches to autism currently distinguish between systemizing and empathic modes of thought in humans (these are Baron-Cohen's terms), but humans probably need to be able to use both modalities.
It's certainly interesting to apply this to religious ideas; for example, an excessive legalism could be connected with the schematic tendency; whereas the empathic mode can be connected with the ideas of love, an open heart, and so on.
So I take the word 'ideological' in the OP as really meaning schematic or overly systemizing. I don't think it's an illness, it's just one polarity in human connectivity.
Is the pope an empathizer rather than a systemizer? I don't know really.
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
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While I appreciate that you all are being very careful to avoid calling other people names, the tone of the conversation is heating up fast...
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
quetzalcoatl: Is the pope an empathizer rather than a systemizer? I don't know really.
Is God an empathizer rather than a systemizer? (I don't have an answer to this one, just trying to provoke here
)
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Surely God is a loving yet dialectical mathematician?
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Sonny-boy should to be in bed by seven o'clock but today we'll make an exception.
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" - or indeed simply whim. If it is simply whim, then we are likely looking at some bad parenting here, and the seven o'clock rule will soon de facto disappear.
quote:
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.
Indeed. The principle here is something like "children shouldn't be given extra opportunities to make a mess that is very hard to clean up". Little Lily has (perhaps...) demonstrated that the rule against her using felt-tip pens is not supported by this principle any longer, and so that rule now needs revision or becomes arbitrary. On the other hand, if that rule was based on the principle of keeping Little Lily healthy, given her extreme allergy to the chemicals in felt-tip pens, then a revision of rule enforcement is in order to minimise the risk of further exposure.
quote:
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.
Real life has an extensive hierarchy of principles and consequently rules. And indeed life has aspects where arbitrary rules dictated by whim 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.
You tried your hardest to find silly examples, ridiculing serious applications with cutesy ones, which is yet another example of cheap rhetoric. Even that failed, since actually people do behave similarly even where the stakes are not very high. Yet concerning marriage the stakes are very high indeed, and while an "argument from too cute to take serious" is a rather original fallacy, it remains a fallacy.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Fucking Ada, I need a drink after that.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
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quote:
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"
How do you decide the balance between these two?
quote:
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".
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? Can you give a clear rule that tells me where this balance is?
quote:
IngoB: Real life has an extensive hierarchy of principles and consequently rules.
Where is this clear and extensive hierarchy in the examples we discussed above? I don't see it.
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?
quote:
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.
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.)
quote:
IngoB: You tried your hardest to find silly examples, ridiculing serious applications with cutesy ones, which is yet another example of cheap rhetoric.
My examples came from every single day in the life of someone who raises children. Ask any parent on the Ship.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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. ...
Yebbut. 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
quote:
would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.
That would be to use your own private judgement to evaluate the Pope, and so Catholic teaching.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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Sometimes we use our intuition, don't we? We see that the kids have made a mess, but something tells us that sometimes they need to do that. But is that intuition based on rules? I'm not sure, maybe a dialectical ability to use the opposite to a rule.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Fucking Ada, I need a drink after that.
Necrophilia is hard work...
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
How do you decide the balance between these two?
Ultimately by the predicted overall effect on the child's future well-being and development. Not that one would usually work through some formal prediction scheme, or anything like that. But that is what conscientious parents "keep in mind".
quote:
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?
I think you will find that I sneaked in a rather important qualifier, based on parental experience: "extra".
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
Can you give a clear rule that tells me where this balance is?
No, I cannot tell you with precision how much mess would be good for your child. But I can tell you that your argumentation was once more based on principle, namely that children need a "chance to discover things, even while making mistakes sometimes," in your own words. And in turn, the balance that you wish to find aims at another principle, the one already mentioned above, namely that we wish well-being and good development for a child's future.
quote:
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?
There is no clear hierarchy between these two, other than provided by the situation. If your child is severely sleep deprived, then the firework is less important. If your child has been resting well, then the firework is more important. But you cannot make these situational judgements without appealing to a higher principle (if subconsciously), namely that one should supply an environment conducive to healthy (brain) development. Both a sleep and stimulation will be needed for that, and so you will be favouring one principle over the other based on your prudent evaluation using a higher principle.
quote:
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.)
What sort of stupid question is that? Well, I guess my example was confusing. I was proposing football as an example that rules based on whim and fashion can be entirely appropriate! For of course there is no obvious principle that determines football, it is simply a historical product of whim and fashion. Whereas I was mentioning Calvinball as an example of a game with a clear principle. Admittedly, this was confusing because the principle in question is the absolute rule of Calvin's (and Hobbes') whim. But anyway, my point was that rules based on whim and fashion are essential to many aspects of human life, like games, art, table manners, ... I'm not at all saying that everything must be ruled by principle.
quote:
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.
I am a parent of a - so far - healthy and happy eight year old.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
"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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: Ultimately by the predicted overall effect on the child's future well-being and development.
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.
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.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
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.
Thanks for that helpful clarification. I noted that my children did what we asked until their ages reached double digits. We then went through the issues of reasoning, bossing, discipline, and learned rather clearly as parents that they did developmentally better, i.e., had better relationships with us and others, and better self esteem, if we allowed freedom to make choices within sensible bounds. Who decides on sensible bounds? It is best if the individual does. But then we've been influenced a bit by aboriginal ideas, where the white person takes the child off the table they are starting to climb on, and the First Nations person helps the child up and spots them in case of a fall. This sort of approach gets interesting when your child go through their teens and 20s.
Would God want us to take the toddler off the table or spot them?
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
quote:
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.
I think we have two related but different meanings of "ideology" here.
One meaning is something like "governed by a system of ideas" and is thus close to "principled". One might even conjugate an irregular verb:
- I have principles
- You are intellectually consistent
- He is ideological.
But on that meaning, ISTM that anyone who is religious (rather than merely spiritual) is ideological - they approach the meaningful questions of life through a system of religious ideas. In which case to denigrate "ideological Christianity", as the Pope has, is to denigrate all Christianity; this is probably not his intended meaning.
The other meaning seems to me to describe someone acting from commitment to an idea, a commitment grown cancerous, unconstrained by common sense or evidence or by any concern for the welfare of others.
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.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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
quote:
would turn sedevacantist faster than you can spell 'infallible' backwards.
That would be to use your own private judgement to evaluate the Pope, and so Catholic teaching.
Of course we all have to live by our private judgement. By what else? Ultimately I have only access to my own judgement, even living according to the judgement of others is my judgement call.
To understand the role of the pope, it is perhaps best to compare the magisterium to a communal attempt to paint a mural of Christ. The popes are then like (hopefully...) particularly artistic people, whom we trust more than others to take a brush and add a stroke here or there, perhaps even sketching out an entirely new section of the painting. Most of us are instead busy colouring in some spot of the mural assigned to us. But as the painting takes shape more and more through everybody's efforts, in particular also through the efforts of the most artistic people, this starts to limit what still can be done without destroying the picture that is taking shape. If now some supposedly highly artistic "pope" starts to paint big, ugly lines right across the face of Jesus, where lots of effort have gone in before to render a wonderful countenance, then one does not have to be a highly artistic "pope" oneself to tell him to stop. It is sufficient that one has some appreciation of the art, that one's eyes are open to what has been painted already.
In this analogy then, the mistake of Protestants is not to call some crazy "pope" artist to order, if he has started messing up the mural big time. That's fair enough. The mistake is to say: "To avoid having to deal with the lead artists going off the rails, the best is if each one of us just paints their own mural, based on this early sketch called "bible" which has been handed out by lead artists long ago. After all, everybody is equally - or at least sufficiently - talented to paint a picture of Christ based on that. There really is no need for having just one painting, and this way we avoid attaching so much significance to lead artists like those unreliable "popes" to guide the community in their efforts."
The Catholic view would be that while you will get some nice works that way, you will frankly also get a lot of horrible paintings. But perhaps more importantly, there was actually a point to doing this communally. In fact, in some sense that was more the point than even how beautiful the mural would look in the end...
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
It seems to me that you are equivocating on the word "guideline" there. Anyway, let us know when you are done wondering.
quote:
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.
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? How would that then be a counter-example to what I have said?
quote:
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.
I did not propose a general principle for all people and matters, but one high level principle for child-rearing. That said, burning in hell for eternity as adulterer is not conducive to a person's well-being and development, and so the risk of that should be avoided. The nature of marriage is justified by a very simple principle: God said so, therefore it is so. If you have ever wondered why people call Him Lord, now you know.
quote:
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.
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)?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
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.
It seems to me that you are equivocating on the word "guideline" there. Anyway, let us know when you are done wondering.
I know English isn't your native language so I'll explain. I'm not wondering at all. I know it's not accurate to project our personality quirks on God.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
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?
You know what, I agree with you on one point. The well-being of the child should be the most important factor in making decisions for our children. I don't think that this will get you there in terms of a criterium though.
Let's go back to our example. It's New Years Eve, the rule is that your child should be in bed by 8, but he asks if he can stay up late to see the fireworks. Do you allow him, or don't you? Both options bring potential good and potential bad to the well-being of the child. I don't think believe there even is an objective measure by which we could weigh them. I don't think that well-being is some scalar (or even vectorial) entity which we could measure if we just had enough information.
But what I find most interesting about your argument is this. It seems to me that as a parent, you broadly have two options in this situation.
Option A: a rule is a rule is a rule. Your child knows that it should be in bed by eight, so this it is.
Option B: you have the well-being of your child in mind, and based on your experience with the child you try to make an educated guess on whether it would be better for his well-being to make an exception to the rule on this occasion.
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.
[ 01. November 2013, 22:11: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
Oh, for the days when being principled was considered a positive trait.
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.
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.
[ 02. November 2013, 00:41: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
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.
Sure.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
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Do you not believe, MT, that there are certain sorts of actions which cannot be ordered to good?
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Zach82: Oh, for the days when being principled was considered a positive trait.
Like I said, my issue here isn't with being principled, it's with the idea that the only alternative to a 'principled' approach is chaos.
quote:
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.
I don't see IngoB giving much room to circumstances, for example in the rule about not being able to remarry.
quote:
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.
I'm not really trying to discuss the content of the RC rules here, but the way these rules are treated.
[ 02. November 2013, 01:18: Message edited by: LeRoc ]
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
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.
Indeed, applying ethical principles properly according to the circumstances of a situation is the whole purpose of conscience.
[ 02. November 2013, 01:18: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Do you not believe, MT, that there are certain sorts of actions which cannot be ordered to good?
Letting a woman die because her anacephalic baby absolutely must not be aborted falls into that category, if anything does.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
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.
(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...
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
I won't argue with you, MT, since I have to make space for Abraham obeying God's command to sacrifice his son in my ethics. I am sure the Roman Catholics can argue the point better than I.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
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.
(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...
You haven't proposed any ethical norms that trump the sanctity of marriage. IngoB has, though, in his talk about the grounds for annullments.
[ 02. November 2013, 01:23: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Zach82: You haven't proposed any ethical norms that trump the sanctity of marriage.
I haven't even discussed the sanctity of marriage.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Zach82: You haven't proposed any ethical norms that trump the sanctity of marriage.
I haven't even discussed the sanctity of marriage.
Fair enough, sorry for thinking this followed from the happenings of the thread. In that case, you are simply wrong to accuse Roman Catholic moral teaching of applying ethical principles without regard to circumstances.
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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Zach82: In that case, you are simply wrong to accuse Roman Catholic moral teaching of applying ethical principles without regard to circumstances.
Until you give me an example of where official Roman Catholic moral teaching regarded circumstances when applying ethical principles, your accusation is moot.
quote:
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.
There's that false dichotomy again.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I'm not wondering at all. I know it's not accurate to project our personality quirks on God.
The "personality quirk" in question is the application of inviolable rules, apparently. So, I take it then that you believe God occasionally supports idolatry? Now and then, you think, God smiles on the exploitation of orphans and widows? According to you, God sometimes applauds religious hypocrisy? Or maybe it is rather the other way around? Maybe God is all holy, without stain, but we are not? Maybe the "personality quirk" we are projecting is the accommodation, the "good enough", the live and let live? Maybe what we are, as we are, at our best already requires God's mercy, and we are busy negotiating God down from fifty good things in us, to forty-five, to forty, to thirty, to twenty, to ten? Maybe becoming perfect as God is perfect, as perfectly impossible as it is, at least requires us to say 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!', and, well, mean it.
quote:
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.
But that is simply because everybody here is always asking about the very edge of accommodation. It's the child asking to stay up late for tenth night in a row. It's the child asking to experience playing with razor blades. It's the child insisting that it can well and truly know for itself whether taking heroin is good. There is no infinite give, there comes a point where the answer is 'no'. And people here invariably probe and probe and probe until they get their 'no'. Again, a lot like a child. Let's say you ask me whether you have to go to mass on Sunday. Sure, I will say. But what if you are sick? Well, stay at home and get well I will say. But what if I missed mass accidentally? Well, that's regrettable but not to worry I respond. But what if you have to mind the kids? Well, that's OK then, please the Lord that way I will say. But what about that urgent piece of work I need to do? Well, I will answer, if it is really that urgent, you can be excused but perhaps try to keep the Sunday free in future. But what if I just don't feel like going? No, I say, that's not good enough. You should worship God, and the Church has declared that going to Sunday mass is a necessary part of that. This really is a duty, if it is not a joy. Aha! There we go. Horrible rules, merciless Church, spiritual slave drivers.
This is not a naive place. Rarely does anybody here ask of me whether one will burn in hell just for feeling an attraction to someone of the same sex. Most people already know that I will answer "of course not". The give that can be given is taken for granted, we must immediately proceed to discussing having gay sex. And again, do I get asked whether that can be forgiven? Of course not, people here know that I will say "of course it can be forgiven". No, we will proceed to whether gay sex can be affirmed as good. And so it is also with marriage. Except that quite frankly what the Church means by marriage is by now so far removed from what people think about marriage that it is hard to even communicate about what the boundaries are that the Church is being pushed against. How much longer until even educated adults have to look up the meaning of "fornication" in a dictionary?
Anyway, I rarely have a chance here to be "nice". The thing I mostly get to do is to beat the boundaries. Fine. I think there are boundaries. And if you push against them, I will push back. That is not, in fact, the be all and end all of my faith, but if it is the be all and end all of what you want to know about my faith, then I will oblige.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Letting a woman die because her anacephalic baby absolutely must not be aborted falls into that category, if anything does.
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.
But this does not tell us at all that RC moral law ignores circumstance in general.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Letting a woman die because her anacephalic baby absolutely must not be aborted falls into that category, if anything does.
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.
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.
If we are to follow God's demands, however difficult, however painful, however apparently cruel, surely it should be in a better cause than our own perfecting? Such as the good of others? At the risk of being accused of picking the bits of scripture which I like the sound of again, did not Jesus speak of people being judged by the way they have done good to those who needed good done to them, without, on that occasion, mentioning adherence to rules about other matters?
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.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
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...
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?
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on
:
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?
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
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?
I will dip a toe into this fray again, somewhat tentatively....
This is beautifully put, Eliab. I think most of those criticising the Catholic position on remarriage would nonetheless agree that this kind of committment is the Christian ideal of marriage. This is the spirit in which marriage should indeed be entered into.
But. We cannot tell the future. So the wife (in this example) could break promises and do many terrible things and render their marriage a hellish place and require, after much effort to salvage things, separation for the good of everyone especially the children....so far, so permissible in the Catholic church. But then, time passes, the husband, who made his vows in all sincerity, becomes lonelier and lonelier...longing for another chance to build a loving relationship and use the God-given gift of sexual love in a healthy way....and he meets someone else and falls in love with her....he is a sincere Catholic who wants nothing more than to live rightly in the eyes of God....
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.
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.
Then they could marry as most of the rest of us do--"I fully intend to be your husband/wife for life, whatever happens, in sickness and in health," etc. But accepting that, in the terrible and regrettable event that this ideal cannot be adhered to, after exhaustive attempts in good faith, a remarriage would not make one a sinner.
But if they leave the church, they are, as Ingo reminded me above, seen by the church as being in even greater spiritual danger, as ex-RCs, than someone who was never an RC.
(This reminder made something inside me want to shrivel up and die. And repelled me even more from my cradle church. An example of the sort of ideology the Pope meant? And yet, in Catholic terms, it makes sense--if you were taught The One True Faith and then reject it, you are knowingly turning away from The Truth.....)
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.
And yet. I think most of us respect the Catholic viewpoint on the sacredness of things. The sanctity of life. The sanctity of marriage. The fact that a sexual relationship is "becoming one flesh" and should ideally be for life. The seriousness of vows.
Also, while I agree the acceptance of ambivalence and shades of grey is part of growing older, I do wonder if we are completely losing any sense of principle.
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.
We need to be reminded that a vow should be a vow. That integrity means acting out what we believe.
But there must be a middle way between a) sticking to an unwanted and miserable celibacy after a marriage has irretrievably broken down, and b) a chaos of promiscuity, which I think no-one here is advocating.
For me, the problem is in the Catholic Church's always being so sure that it is right and that it alone has the True Faith. That it alone knows more fully than any other Christian group what is The Will of God. That it can, God-like, pronounce on the dangerous state of one's immortal soul.
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.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
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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.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
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.
Thank you, quetzalcoatl. I guess "losing any sense of principle" was harsh, and I didn't mean it specifically re people going through a divorce, with all the agony that usually entails.
I meant that we don't--do we?-- have the strong sense that existed in the past about vows that cannot be broken; about an ideal worth dying for; about refusing to compromise one's principles; about really firmly believing in anything.
I'm as much a product of this Zeitgeist as anyone, and I do agree with the more modern view that compassion, leniency, taking circumstances into account, etc etc ...I'm just wondering if something has been lost.
What has appealed in the past about Christianity has been the sort of chivalry of it. The quest, the ideal, the aim to live up to the impossible, the high standards....
[ 02. November 2013, 10:06: Message edited by: Cara ]
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
Nobody has murdered that woman. Or perhaps God has, if you insist. At any rate, we are responsible for what we intend, and what we do, not for the often terrible state of the world. Nobody intended to have this woman die, everybody would have loved if she lived. (Assuming that she did die as predicted, this was a only a possible outcome in the future.) More importantly, nobody could do anything for her. And that is the point. The action "abort her foetus" is simply not available, because that is murder, and one cannot do evil to achieve good. It does not matter that we can predict her death (with some likelihood) unless we do evil. We are responsible for what we do, not for the overall state of the world.
If you think about it, this is actually a very humane view of morality. It does not put on your shoulders the duty to fix all ills of the world. It simply says to you "do good, avoid evil", in a local, personal sense. That this woman (perhaps) had to die is a tragedy, but just because you are involved in that tragedy does not mean that you are responsible for it. You are responsible for what you intend and do.
quote:
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.
Well, I would hope that the pope did not intend to ditch the cross there to increase the appeal of Christianity.
quote:
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?
There's nothing wrong with exploring the extremes of any system of thought. There is everything wrong with only considering the extremes and pretending that they characterise the whole. Zach82 correctly stated that the consideration of circumstances is an integral part of Catholic moral calculus. You dismissed that with a "Sure" linking to an extreme case where according to Catholic morals the circumstances cannot change the fundamental moral consideration. I don't know what you were thinking, but it certainly was not a particularly fair response.
quote:
Originally posted by Cara:
But. We cannot tell the future.
That, however, is the very point! We do not make vows because we can predict their fulfilment: I have foreseen that I will stick with you to the end, so I might as well say so now. That's not a vow, that's soothsaying. A vow is nothing but a declaration of war on the unpredictability of the future. It says: the future may be unpredictable - but I am not. Come what may, this is what I will do. You can rely on nothing in this world, usually, but extraordinarily the part of the world that is me will become utterly reliable to you by the force of my will. For I say to you that this is what I will do, I am putting myself forward against all else. Here you go, this will be true because I say so here and now. Bank on it. That is a vow. Anything else is not a vow. Anything else is perhaps a pleasing declaration of intentions, or soothsaying, or whatever. But not a vow. Hence if you vow "till death", then it is "till death". If you feel that you cannot set your face against the future that far ahead, well, then do not vow it. But since you can determine your life till death, you can vow till death. And if you do, then that is that. Till death.
quote:
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.
Is it really impossible or too cruelly difficult to be single? I'm not saying that being single cannot be a severe hardship, if one does not want to be single. I lived a few years of desperate loneliness, so frankly I know what I'm talking about there... But I do not think that it is insufferable even then. A total marriage breakdown forces one to be single. That's not nice. Total marriage breakdowns are not nice. But it is not the end of the world, and it is not really comparable even to actual martyrdom. It is a heavy, but bearable cross. It is the risk one runs.
quote:
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.
Indeed. Personally however, I do not think that the Church should advertise herself that way. In my opinion there is no greater virtue in presenting a life of faith than brutal honesty. No hidden clauses, no hidden agenda.
quote:
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.
First, it is remarriage, not divorce, which is fundamentally problematic. It is entirely possible that one is an outstanding Catholic with a failed marriage. Second, I've not said anything about "fast track to hell". Just how bad a remarriage is is for God to judge, not for me. What I can say is that remarriage has a specific problem, simply because it is an ongoing matter. One cannot properly repent of something one intends to maintain.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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She was sacrificed for unchristian principles.
God has NOTHING to do with it.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
One cannot properly repent of something one intends to maintain.
Like condoms and the BCP which are used by 70% of RCs in my province? Educated people see some of these rule and ideas for what they are.
This calls to the attention, the imperfection of humans and the world. Do we commit an evil or allow an evil to exist for the sake of preventing another evil.
Departing from marriage for a minute, and I'm not wanting this to bed derailed to a dead horse topic. Consider the abortion that must be performed or the mother will die. Even RCs will allow this to occur, except perhaps in some unusual ideological contexts such as Ireland's Savita Halappanavar. But psychological well being is not very important, particularly when historically it is women who suffer the most.
I suspect the RCs will eventually change some of their doctrine and ideas. They have before. it just takes them a long long time. Maybe this pope will begin a push, a few more old fogey cardinals will die off, some better ones will be appointed, and they'll update themselves again. It must always be realized that the giant debating society of the college of cardinals is made of people. People who probably want to do good, but also have motivations common to everyone else: status, reputation, money, sex, control.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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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.
Posted by agingjb (# 16555) on
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532694
A woman jailed for having a miscarriage. Little remains to be said.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
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quote:
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.
Equivocation. Hey, it worked during the English Reformation, right?
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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This troubles me greatly I must admit. It appears that Christ through John, John primus inter pares at least in proclaiming the love of the God of love, Love, said that it was, is better to be butchered by Domitian, watch one's children butchered before ones eyes by implication, for not being pragmatic about him. Even Rob Bell agrees. Or did.
We are NOT to compromise with Domitian. Because once we start with a pinch of incense we assent to our sons performing his drone strikes. Where does rendering unto Caesar or taking the mark, or the number or the number of the name of the Beast begin and end?
My lurid awfulization is NOT likely to happen and wasn't a majority Christian experience I realize. Revelation 2-3 doesn't cover it and 13 implies it's better to be an outcast, to join the underclass, to starve with ones children rather than sell out to theo-capitalism. Although there were obscene persecutions by the state starting with Saul a generation before Nero, which involved the vilest of Holocaust scenes, involving Christians and their children.
So working this out in my drunkard's walk here, I'm less troubled, but it will return.
Because I'm troubled continuously in part by Christians bringing martyrdom upon themselves in the Islamic world, for example (or India or China), not for being ... martyrs - witnesses - of the way of Jesus. Christians shot back in Maaloula.
If there is any uncomfortable ideology, it is the incontrovertible one of passive resistance to all other ideology. Especially in the body of Christ.
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on
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quote:
One cannot commit evil to achieve good.
What about "just war"?
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
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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
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
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
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.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
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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.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
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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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
She was sacrificed for unchristian principles. God has NOTHING to do with it.
… in your personal opinion, which has no particular authority.
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Like condoms and the BCP which are used by 70% of RCs in my province?
I'm not quite sure how one would use the BCP for contraception? For use as a barrier method it seems a bit … voluminous. I do not know how to fold paper condoms from its pages, and those would be rather painful to use. Perhaps as a kind of symbolic chastity belt, strategically placed over the genitals? Or maybe I'm over-thinking this, would you just wilt the partner's desires by reciting from its pages?
At any rate, I doubt 70% of RCs use the BCP in some kind of official liturgical function, where that could be an issue. If they want to use the BCP as inspiration for private prayer, then I would consider that as a somewhat odd choice but not usually a sinful one. As for the use of condoms, it is hardly news that sex is the most common occasion for sin. One can however stop using condoms, so there's no particular issue there as far as repenting goes. If you want a relatively close analogy to remarriage in the field of contraception, consider vasectomy. Can one repent of the snip without attempting to reverse it?
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
Consider the abortion that must be performed or the mother will die.
That does not render the abortion morally licit as direct means. One must not do evil to achieve good. In some cases one can argue that the abortions occurs as unintended, though foreseen, side effect of the treatment that saves the mother. Then it is licit by virtue of 'double effect'. It is a fine line to tread, but an important one nevertheless.
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
I suspect the RCs will eventually change some of their doctrine and ideas. They have before.
They have not, at least not in the sense that you hope for.
quote:
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.
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.
quote:
Originally posted by agingjb:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24532694 A woman jailed for having a miscarriage. Little remains to be said.
Really? I assume a lot would remain to be said, until such injustice is ended. Meanwhile, politics and law do not suddenly become identical with morals and religion, just because that fits your rhetorical purposes for once.
quote:
Originally posted by art dunce:
quote:
One cannot commit evil to achieve good.
What about "just war"?
The usual conditions for "just war" are basically a spelling out of "double effect" for this case. Key is the "just cause", which basically requires a "wrong received". It is the defence against this wrong that is the direct aim of the war effort, the evil done to the enemy is the (foreseen) side effect. Consequently, "kill the enemy" is not a just war command, whereas "throw the invaders out of our country, even if it means killing some of them" is. An important qualifier in this context is that political authority is considered as establishing a real moral hierarchy before God. That is to say, just war is not a matter of every soldier justifying every shot fired. It is a matter of those in power making a just (or unjust) decision to go to war.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
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quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
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.
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)?
Granting your point that the aspect of whether a belief is contrary to evidence & experience is harder to apply in matters religious.
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.
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. Including aunts with castor oil.
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.
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.
Best wishes,
Russ
Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on
:
quote:
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
I'm not sure that these are the only two alternatives. Since the spouse is the sacramental minister, then the vow made to the other, is a vow made to Christ, who acts in the Sacrament.
In any event, I think that there is merit in reflecting on the covenantal nature of Marriage. The scriptural notion of covenant is that it has an enduring character. That is that the parties are bound to keep it, even if the other party does not: you shall be my people and I shall be your God, even if you go whoring after other God's.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
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. Then you expose the self-contradiction inherent in your approach most clearly. For you insist on "doing what's best for others" contrary to "one's intellectual system". Well, how do you know then what's best for others, if not by whatever intellectual system you follow? Let's be clear, whatever criteria you use to evaluate the situation, those are nothing but your intellectual system. You cannot possibly escape having one, your decisions are made by your intellect. Even if your intellectual system happens to be "I just follow my emotions", then that still is an intellectual system. Because you cannot have actionable emotions without intellectual content. If you for example feel sorry for someone you must have understood that there is someone, and that their situation is not good. The one and only thing that can be discussed here is which intellectual system is the most appropriate. If you want to make a case for an intellectual system that closely follows every sentiment that pops in one's head, fine. Go ahead.
quote:
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.
These are not my doctrines, but God's. And they are not communicated by me, but by the Church. Where this is not true, it is not the fault of God or the Church, but mine alone. And I certainly follow the Golden Rule in my wishes on how doctrines shall be applied in practice. I hence see no threat in what you say there.
quote:
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.
This pope's strength is motivation, not precision, and he is good for rallying the crowds (and perhaps the mass media), but not for theological analysis. Take the speech in question, as reported by Radio Vatican. You may think that he's advocating a moral free-styling approach there. He sure sounds that way. Except that he then explicitly references the First Letter of John for support. And that letter sure as heck makes dire reading for your average moral free-styler. And then he goes on to talk about the necessity of prayer. So if we want to make some sense of this, then probably that the prayerful Christian through his closeness to God does not sin and hence passes muster according to 1 John, yet without rigidly taking away the key of knowledge according to the gospel. Fine. That's a great motivation for us all to pray more in order to achieve a better morality, aspirational inspiration. However, it's unfortunately also impractical bollocks as far as the reality of the Church as a governing body for Catholic lives is concerned. For the entire Catholic hoi polloi, yours truly included, is not suddenly going to turn into prayerful saints who can be flexible about their morality because they are so in tune with God that whichever way they flex will be good. This is, quite frankly, exactly the sort of talk I expect from a modern Jesuit. Basically, it's an idealism that explicitly rejects dealing with realities on account of an abstracted Jesus. It's ideological Christianity. And that's sweetly ironic...
quote:
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.
First, 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. You could introduce such an escape clause, of course, which at least would restore honesty to your vows. However, they would then not be appropriate sacramental vows expressing the command of the Lord any longer.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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.
...
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?
There are some moral questions that are straightforward. There's a simple choice between 'what I want to do' (he/she's attractive, my husband/wife is away on business and I feel neglected) and 'what the right thing is to do' ("Resist the devil and he will flee from you"). Most of the time, we don't need any debate about these. They are temptations.
But there are others that are more complex. Usually, none of the outcomes are right. 'Save the mother or the baby' is the classic example.
It may well help you to think through the moral implications of a complex situation to break it down into sections. But if you don't then put the sections back together and look at the issue as a whole - the overall consequences for example -, or if you think there's some ethical rule that will sort out the problem for you, you are ducking taking moral responsibility for your actions.
It becomes much the same as using corban as an ethical tool to let you off supporting your elderly parents.
[ 03. November 2013, 13:19: Message edited by: Enoch ]
Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?
It pretty much conforms to the Church's teaching as expressed in all the Magisterium of which I am aware.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?
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.
[ 03. November 2013, 13:28: Message edited by: Zach82 ]
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
[QBI'm not quite sure how one would use the BCP for contraception?
[/QB]
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
[QBI'm not quite sure how one would use the BCP for contraception?
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]
I thought it "Book of Common Prayer" too. That's what happens when you hand around the Ship too much.
Posted by Trisagion (# 5235) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?
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.
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?
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
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.
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.
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...
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.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
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.
Being a lot more sensible. Abortion is preventable and is prevented by proper birth control and making it widely available and affordable. Canada has no abortion laws at all. It is all regulated within health only. Birth control is relatively available. Lower unwanted preg rates, lower abortion than our neighbour to the south. And young people don't have more sex when the birth control is more available.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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.
There was no cruelty, accidental or intentional, in my remark at all. I objected to Russ' characterisation, which did not allow for the possibility that somebody might be devastated by their "imposing suffering" because they are not in good conscience able to avoid that. Russ' based his potentially highly unfair characterisation on nothing else but that somebody ended up suffering, best I can tell. That's what my "just because" stood in reference to.
And yes, alleviating suffering is not the one and only consideration in Catholic morals. You can sneer at Catholic moral rules all you want, they are as valid an attempt to achieve the moral good as any that I have seen.
quote:
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:
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...
quote:
Originally posted by Desert Daughter:
You Orthodox are so much saner in many respects...
... there is an idea. We could send them all over to the Orthodox and thereby hasten exponentially the end of Eastern Orthodoxy in vaguely Protestant higgledy-piggledy. I like it!
quote:
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.
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. And thus the question becomes what they are in fact trying to do. That is simply the "primary act". If what they want to do is "to move troops into this part of our country, currently occupied by the enemy, in order to bring it back under our control and remove the occupiers from our territory", then that is as such not an immoral act. It is a good act, or at least a neutral one, for certainly someone who has authority over the country is morally allowed to do such things. It is true that one can foresee that the occupiers will put up a fight about this, that there will be war with all its evil. But is is not the intention to "kill as many occupiers as possible, whereby as side effect we may regain control", rather the intention is to regain control whereby as side effect some occupiers may get killed. And this distinction is not just a theoretical one, but can be expressed in concrete policy. For example, to give the enemy army an opportunity to lay down its arms and withdraw makes sense only for one of these intentions, whereas to throw a nuclear bomb on the enemy even if it renders the territory useless for thousands of years makes sense only for the other intention.
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...
[ 03. November 2013, 19:20: Message edited by: IngoB ]
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
There was no cruelty, accidental or intentional, in my remark at all.
I would suggest that if it were accidental, you didn't see it when you wrote it and might not see it now. You are not the judge of how your remarks strike others, they are.
quote:
quote:
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:
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...
False dichotomize much? Don't answer. You do.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
quote:
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...
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.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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. ...
So the reason why a soldier is entitled to kill is simply because he is obeying orders? And double effect is a moral command, not because it's in scripture or the Fathers, but because the Magisterium says it is. Presumably the same applies to deontologicalism.
Simple question. Can any of this be demonstrated as the one true, correct and binding approach to ethics from either scripture or the traditions of the Fathers? I'm familiar enough with the scriptures to pronounce that so far as the scriptures, the answer is No. I'm not familiar enough to answer this question vis à vis the Fathers. Is there any Shipmate with the knowledge to be able to oblige?
I can see that if you are a Catholic, and the Pope has said that is how you do it, you are obliged to follow this salami-slicing approach to ethics. But there doesn't seem to be any other reason for doing so - particularly not when it delivers conclusions which without that imprimatur, appear to Christian informed consciences to be self-evidently wrong.
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Desert Daughter. Sister catholic.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
IngoB: But that is simply because everybody here is always asking about the very edge of accommodation.
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 accomodation...
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB: quote:
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.
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.
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'.
It also reminds me of a scene in the Astérix comics, where the galley slaves have to row, but for a moment they get to decide what music is being drummed while they're rowing. When there is a strict rule, giving some freedom about some detail within this rule isn't 'taking the circumstances into account'.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Trisagion:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
Is that really Catholic teaching on ethics or is it the Ingobic version of it?
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.
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?
I was commenting that the Roman Catholic Church's moral teaching is not officially deontological. It will, so far as I know, countenance any ethical system so long as it concludes matters according to its moral teaching. Aquinas' Summa hasn't been entered into the RC canon quite yet.
I have no idea how you worked it out that I was accusing RC moral teaching of being irrational. I was saying that it was, or at least tried to be. It seems to me that complaints about "ideology" are actually complaints about keeping moral reasoning rational, and above the vague feelings that most people base their moral reasoning on.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet:
quote:
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...
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.
Indeed. Though I agree with Ingo that it's justified to feel uneasy, or sad, about the knowledge that in removing the foetus in the tube, one is putting an end to its life--even though it will inevitably die, there is no chance for it in the tube, and the operation will save the mother.
That's why, when I had a ruptured fallopian tube due to an ectopic pregnancy, I was glad, in a way, that I hadn't known about the existence of the foetus in the tube beforehand and so there hadn't been the necessary decision to knowingly remove it.
But the justifiable uneasiness or sadness felt by surgeon, mother, or both should in no way cause them any hesitation to remove it, if the ectopic pregnancy is discovered before rupture!
Once the tube ruptures, as it inevitably will, the foetus dies.
And you have a life-threating situation for the mother, who can then only be saved, if she can be, by very swift intervention.
It would be immoral to delay the removal of an ectopic "pregnancy" once you know it is there.
Of course the removal is, as Ingo says, "morally licit."
(I wonder if it is perhaps misleading to call it "pregnancy," as there is no hope, no way, the foetus can grow beyond a certain tiny size in the tube? On the other hand, if it's a fertilized and growing zygote, then it may already have a soul....who knows.
And certainly has a life, though doomed to die very soon. Hence the sadness about knowingly removing it.)
I very nearly died when my fallopian tube ruptured, and would have, if not whisked swiftly off to hospital and operated on. I am very lucky to be here today, and to have had further children via the remaining opposite tube.
Of course if I'd known about the ectopic pregnancy beforehand I'd have agreed to have it removed as the only sensible and moral course--but would have felt sadness about hastening, even by a few days, the death of that small life, even though its implantation in the tube was a "mistake" of nature, and it never had a chance.
All that's a tangent, maybe, and skirting DH territory.
I just wanted to say that Ingo's "justifiable uneasiness" in this situation does make sense to me, not because one's on morally unsure ground--one isn't; but because it's sad to be in the position of having to hasten the--albeit inevitable-- death of this tiny spark of life.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
I listened to a radio program recently - This American Life - that featured a Roman Catholic priest who has focused on addressing scrupulosity. That it, a psychological condition bordering on obsessive compulsive disorder, that causes people to become overly concerned that they are committing sins or breaking religious rules. The priest, Father Thomas Santa, has a blog for anyone interested in looking him up.
From my cursory Googling this condition seems to proportionately affect Roman Catholics and Mormons - both members of churches with more rigid views towards moral behavior. This is based on the fact that most of the results are from Catholic or LDS websites. I personally have never even heard of the disorder.
I wonder if we can think of this in the context of the impact of ideological Christianity.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
Oh yes--suffering to an exaggerated degree from scruples--I gather it was a common disease of many saints through the ages--sometimes recognised later by the saint as a disease, a lack of balance, and sometimes not. Common too in many nineteenth-century Christians, whether extremely Calvinistic or extremely Catholic/Anglo-Catholic. Whether worrying excessively about having read something for pleasure on a Sunday, or about whether they ought to self-flagellate (literally) again.
The young Christian Rossetti wrote an interesting story called Maude in which (IRRC) the eponymous protagonist felt deeply unworthy of receiving the Eucharist, had terrible scruples about doing so (of course one received less often in those days anyway), but was eventually persuaded by a loving friend that she should take advantage of this God-given gift to his followers. Which she was very glad to have done when she had an accident and afterwards faded away and died.
I may not have remembered the story right, but anyway it illustrates scruples taken to an extreme.
I'm not sure if the disease of scrupulosity comes from "ideology" per se; as I think has been proven on this thread, "ideology" can mean almost any set of strongly-held beliefs. Perhaps it's rather the result of a particular sort of Christian ideology--that which emphasises sinfulness far more intensely than it emphasises that each of us is beloved by God.
Posted by Desert Daughter (# 13635) on
:
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).
Sadly, this pushes people to focus too much on their ideological system/ the "purity" of doctrine etc, which is ultimately too inward-looking, and prevents the person from a dispassionate (as in neutral and open minded), disinterested, creative (!)and faithful engagement with the world. I think this is what the Pope meant.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
Yes, Desert Daughter. I think this is very well put, and in so many cases right. Extreme ideology (often; or always?) covers up insecurity and provides an identity.
An "anthropomorphic" concept of God. Food for thought here.
God as rigorous, stringent, judgmental, hard to please? Like a not very nice human being one knows all too well, rather than like the loving mysterious sustainer of the universe?
The rebuttal to that (I think) would be that God is the Perfect Good, and therefore naturally offended by sin...but that too, come to think of it, is anthropomorphic.
Hmmm.....
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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).
From personal observation, the people I can think of who exhibit signs of scrupulosity are those raised within legalistic churches - not new converts, who as you point out can rely on the ideology as a means by which to measure their performance, as it were.
There may be something in the impact of certain ideologies relating to sin on children, that might lead to scrupulosity. If you come to Christ as an adult, you know you have been a sinner. If you are raised in the church, however, you may feel like you have been trained from birth not to sin, so therefore any sin committed much worse because of your knowledge of Christian moral standards.
I know two people raised in legalistic churches (not RCC) whose religious guilt literally led them into mental and emotional breakdown.
The Pope may actually be right to call some of these actions an illness! His quote below.
quote:
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?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
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.)
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
oops! up above, as I'm sure everyone guessed, I meant
Christina Rossetti.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
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…
Let's recall what we are discussing here, namely your statement: "However, the Roman Catholic Church always seems to choose Option A. And on the Ship, you have invariably been defending this option." 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." Whereupon it is entirely fair to point out that the only thing you ever want to discuss about Syria is how it treats factions violently opposed to the government, whereas you never care about for example its innovative agriculture policies. That's not evading anything. That's simply pointing out that the single-minded focus here is all yours, and however much you hate what you see in that focus, you cannot claim that there is nothing else if you never bother to look. And it is straight bollocks to then accuse the defender of being only engaged in defending human rights abuse, given that the defender is simply responding to incessant questioning about only this one topic. That was my point.
Now, I think your comparison to Syria and human rights abuses is terribly unfair; and while you can justify it here as "just making a point", this comparison is in my eyes telling in its inappropriateness. For the RCC is certainly not imposing her contentious policies in a bid to keep control over her assets or to reign in its citizens and disrupt opposition. It's just the opposite! Imposing these policies is just what threatens to tear the RCC apart, or at least bleed her dry slowly as the discontented simply leave. The idea that making rules against remarriage has been dreamt up by the RC hierarchy to keep more people in the Church is just preposterous. The RC hierarchy can on occasion be stupid, but they are hardly that stupid. The RCC is imposing all these contentious policies because she really thinks that she has to. That these are truths, that the Lord requires this. She may be mistaken about this, but it sure is a honest mistake, not some kind of political calculus.
Unless this is recognised, this discussion will always be unfair. The RCC really is nothing like Syria. Not even if one believes that her policies are (in part!) deeply damaging.
quote:
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'.
Again, we are not discussing whether the RCC is accommodating remarriage. She is not going to. We are discussing whether the RCC ever takes circumstances into account. And the answer is that the RCC takes circumstances into account all the time, including concerning marriage. 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. They did not ask me to marry again, this time properly, or anything like that. They simply accepted what I had done back then as sufficient for the sacrament. Is that not taking circumstances into account, is that not accommodating people in their concrete situation? I sure think so. Likewise I gave an extended example in the previous post about all the many legitimate ways in which one can avoid attending Sunday mass. Again, is that not taking circumstances into account? But this is not infinite. It is not just any arbitrary excuse that will get you out of attending Sunday mass, and it is true that the Church will not accommodate remarriages as valid. And if you zero in on exactly these issues, immediately and exclusively, then indeed you will encounter an entirely unbending Church. But this simply is not a fair characterisation of the Church dealing with her faithful in general. 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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
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."
You're taking the comparison too far. Admittedly the Syria comparison is over the top, but I was only trying to illustrate why people discuss 'on the edge of accomodation'.
quote:
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.
What I was trying to say that granting small things while prohibiting big things isn't 'taking the circumstances into account'.
I'm going to leave this discussion for a while; it's a bit tiring when I have to make comparisons to illustrate a point, and the other person attacks aspects of the comparison that aren't very relevant to the point I'm making.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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. ...
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?
Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on
:
Of course! Jesus demands it.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
quote:
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. ...
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?
Fun fact: non-Catholics can be sanated without even knowing about it!
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
Gosh Ingo, one learns every day. Despite having grown up in the RCC and still having many family members in it, I'd never heard of radical sanation.
One of said family members, who had married in the C of E ,of which her husband was nominally a member, became more committed to her childhood faith, and wanted her marriage to become valid in the eyes of the Catholic church; so she and her husband, after a course of study I think, had a little ceremony --not sure if a full marriage service, but anyway making their marriage into a valid Catholic one.
I'd never heard of radical sanation, but having looked it up, I see that it can apply just to the one spouse, if the other spouse is unwilling to contract a Catholic marriage. And if the other spouse is very hostile, you don't even have to tell them you've done it. (I guess this is what Zach's referring to). But I guess this doesn't "do" anything to the unaware spouse, it's just that from the Catholic spouse's point of view, the marriage is now considered by the church to be kosher (so to speak).
Thanks for the opportunity to learn something new!
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
I think marriages contracted between non-Catholics are considered valid so long as occult rites are not used. The most common ground for invalidity, in that direction, would be if one or both were lapsed Catholics and a dispensation to marry according to non-Roman Catholic rites was not obtained.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
quote:
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.)
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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
Since there's interest in the topic, I link to the radio program mentioned on scrupulosity.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/507/confessions - under "Prologue."
He's also written a book.
[ 04. November 2013, 14:54: Message edited by: seekingsister ]
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?
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.
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
Goodness, no need to be so mean about it.
It is an issue for some people, if not for you.
The best Christian I can be is not the best Christian you can be, if that makes sense. We all start at different places; through faith we end up in the same place. The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard - I'm sure you've read that one.
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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.
I agree strongly and disagree strongly with this! Agree - it's unhelpful to say things like 'hey, you should be doing a lot better, look at Martin Luther!' That can just load people up with guilt, and discipleship is, ISTM, about become more fully the person we can be, not the person Martin Luther was.
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.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
(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.)
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
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.)
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.
Posted by Ronald Binge (# 9002) on
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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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
I do see your point. I guess my view is that for some people the struggle to overcome sin is going to be the main focus of their Christian life, as it were. Whereas others struggle with sin but can also speak prophetically or strengthen the faith of others through their teachings.
I'm unconvinced by Zach82's point, that if these great Christian leaders were ideologues and achieved positive change, that means we should all behave in exactly the same way. Even if we did most of us would not achieve the same results; and for some the feeling of inferiority caused by trying to live up to such an ideal becomes crippling, achieving something very far away from a feeling of God's love and grace.
Posted by LeRoc (# 3216) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
quote:
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.)
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.
This shows exactly how easy it is. Just mention their names in a post as if they are supporting your side of the argument, and then it's up to the others to show that they're incompatible.
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
quote:
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.
Though note responses like this one.
Posted by Cara (# 16966) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
Presumably your wife also had to agree to being sanated?
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.
Ah, ok, that clears things up! And this sounds like the same sort of ceremony as my family member had; I just didn't know the official name of the procedure.
It does seem to me it would be a strange marriage where one didn't inform the other party about the radical sanation, but that scenario was mentioned in the one place where I quickly read about it--catholic answers website.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
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.
Don't cardinals have to be priests?
Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
quote:
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.
Don't cardinals have to be priests?
They have to be bishops.
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.
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 ]
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.
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 ]
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.
Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on
:
Mockingale
Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on
:
quote:
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.
This describes very accurately my own experience. Should I ever meet someone else, it just seems capricious that I shouldn't be allowed to remarry. Which points to a very obvious fact, which nevertheless seems to pass a lot of people by: it takes two to get married, but it only needs one to end the marriage.
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.
Posted by CL (# 16145) on
:
quote:
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.
Pole was tonsured before he received the galero, thus was in minor orders; a lay cardinal in the old parlance.
There was never anything in that news story; it stemmed from the ST picking up on a wish fulfilment post on Facebook by some idiot Jesuit in the US last week.
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on
:
quote:
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?
The question isn't whether the man can be forgiven, but whether he can be released
from further obligation. If he can't, then it doesn't matter how understandable his breaking of the vow is, or how readily God forgives him for it, he is still bound by his first marriage and cannot validly contract another.
quote:
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.
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.
I think rather that Catholic marriage vows are a special case because they do not have an implicit release clause. They are unusual in that they remain binding even if the other party repudiates the marriage. What seems to me to be the important point is that this interpretation is clearly advertised in advance. 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.
quote:
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.
I agree with that. 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. While I accept that this might be difficult for a self-identifying Catholic, the difficulty really is a result of the fact that they do not agree with their own church. That's always going to be a problem in a church which claims an authoritative (and at times, infallible) right to proclaim doctrine.
If the Pope were proposing to change that, and start a new form of Catholicism in which the church didn't claim to know, but was there to provide a space for the faithful to explore, the full truth of the gospel, then that would be radical news indeed. However I don't think there's a chance in Hell of him doing that, so I can't see much actual substance to his apparent objection to ideology.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
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.
I agree. Indeed, the statement "it's not divorce the church has a problem with, it's remarriage" is seriously morally pernicious. It implies that a person who wants to dump their spouse is OK doing so, as long as they don't marry again. They are entitled to repudiate their vows and leave the person they gave them to in limbo, a Christian equivalent of an agunah , without doing anything that's really wrong, and certainly nothing like as bad as the abandoned spouse then marrying someone else.
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab
The question isn't whether the man can be forgiven, but whether he can be released from further obligation.
Precisely what further obligation is the man under? Obviously not to be a good husband, love, cherish etc. That bit is now unperformable, or more usually has been taken on by someone else. Furthermore, if the second marriage comes to an end, whether by death of the second husband or a second divorce, the law of Moses forbids the first husband from taking her back.
It seems to me, that if any obligation exists, it would have to be owed to God, not the defaulting spouse and to be reduced to 'not marrying someone else', 'compulsory celibacy' with no extra bits.
and
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
quote:
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.
Well to quote the disciples again, "If such is the case of the man with his wife, it is better not to marry." I think that would have a long-term effect on the numbers of new RCCs if the church actually put forward that teaching, but at least it would be consistent.
Meanwhile we have Paul's repeated concerns about the early church and the sexual desire of Christians, with the recommendation of marriage as preferable to fornication or immorality. If it is better to marry than to burn, then it is so for everyone surely, even the divorced.
Then there's 1 Tim 5 discussing young widows:
quote:
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.
So does this only apply to widows and not the divorced or abandoned? If the church is to prioritize its care for the needy on the poor and elderly, and the younger widows are to remarry to reduce the burden on the church, then what of the younger divorced? They should both starve and struggle with sensual desire?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
quote:
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.
But what message does this convey to the partner? Presumably that one understands, right now, while going through the process of proclaiming that this other person is of such importance that one wants to spend one's whole life with them, that this is not necessarily possible and one wants a safe way out which enables a further marriage if the opportunity arises. 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.
Posted by Eliab (# 9153) on
:
quote:
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.
It seems to me that you're asking "What vows should I make if I don't want to think about what exactly they mean?"
I don't really have an answer to that. Sorry.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
I just don't like the idea of dissolution being considered at the time of marriage.
Nobody wants to consider at the time of marriage that their spouse might end up beating them, or two-timing on them, or initiating a one-sided divorce to run off with some floozie (or floozor or whatever the male equivalent is). But one would have to be a blithering idiot to not realize that these things happen, and no marriage can be demonstrated at the time of its inception to be immune from these potentialities. I can promise for myself not to do these things. I cannot promise for my spouse, and if my spouse were to do such things (and my first one did), it's not down to me.
Posted by quetzalcoatl (# 16740) on
:
It's just realism, as mousethief says. When people get married, I should think a lot of them wonder about its future, and whether they will survive. It doesn't mean that they won't survive; and it doesn't mean that they are not committed. It's a bit like getting on a plane, I do wonder if I won't survive. Well, I'd be a damn fool not to.
Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on
:
As a parent, there is no earthly way I would lend money or give it to a child for a house down payment without protecting myself and my child with a legal document such that if the marriage dissolves the money returns to me and my child. Is this also forbidden in your view?
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
I'm obviously not very good at expressing what I mean.
If someone who would be expected to have a Catholic marriage comes out with the suggestion of having one not recognised as a real marriage by that church, and there is no stated reason for this, so it could seem that this is to enable a remarriage if this one doesn't work out, it raises certain questions.
1. Is this person's heart really in getting married to (for argument's sake, me)?
2. Does this person not trust that I intend the marriage to be in perpetuity?
And the answers to these questions are pretty important.
What happens afterwards, as people change and situations change is another matter. Which is why I wouldn't rule out remarriage. Banning that is allowing one party to blight the rest of the life of the other, as well as destroying the marriage. But that is afterwards.
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
I'm sorry, Penny, but that didn't help. I don't really understand what you are referring to with
"If someone who would be expected to have a Catholic marriage comes out with the suggestion of having one not recognised as a real marriage by that church, and there is no stated reason for this, so it could seem that this is to enable a remarriage if this one doesn't work out,"
Do you mean people getting married with mental reservations? Catholics wanting to marry but not inside the Church so they can get out of it later if need be?
Sorry if I'm dense.
Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on
:
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.
Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on
:
quote:
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.
Thank you. That's it.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
You could end up with the paradox of a non-Catholic partner demanding a Catholic wedding to ensure that their Catholic future spouse was really serious about them. I wonder if this has ever happened.
Posted by Anglo Catholic Relict (# 17213) on
:
quote:
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.
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.
Posted by Anglo Catholic Relict (# 17213) on
:
quote:
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.
All of which is true enough, but does not allow for contrition, repentance and a new start. The sanctity of marriage is all well and good, in an ideal world, but this is not an ideal world, abuses and affairs do happen and divorce is not the unforgiveable sin.
In Catholic thinking, the language is changed to that of annulment where possible, and everyone is happy.
[ 08. November 2013, 14:16: Message edited by: Anglo Catholic Relict ]
Posted by seekingsister (# 17707) on
:
ACR and other Catholics - a question.
Do you know if children are ever considered, in the discussion of remarriage?
For example, a divorced woman whose children could benefit spiritually from their mother's remarriage to a faithful Christian. Is remaining single and celibate preferred to providing a stable Christian household for children?
If not, does the church make any provision to particularly assist and care for women in those situations?
Posted by South Coast Kevin (# 16130) on
:
quote:
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.
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...
Posted by mousethief (# 953) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by South Coast Kevin:
quote:
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.
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...
Yes to SKC, NO to ACR. The way the problem was set up, the pledge was not to drive to Bristol, but to drive YOUR FRIEND to Bristol. Driving alone to Bristol doesn't keep the pledge. This answer doesn't meet the hypothesis where it lives, so to speak. "Fail" as the kids say.
Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Anglo Catholic Relict:
... In Catholic thinking, the language is changed to that of annulment where possible, and everyone is happy.
No we aren't. Annulment is based on examining exactly what the state of affairs was when the marriage was contracted, and ignoring everything since. Did the parties at that moment have the right understanding and intention? If they did, but one of them has broken their vows and run off with someone else, hard luck. If either of them did not, then though there might have been what looked like a marriage, there was only the illusion of one. It never happened.
This does tease out a valid point. There are some people who lack the stability of character to be able to give the commitments that marriage involves. So it is unjust to those who find themselves married to such people to hold them to it. But as a general principle, it is delusional.
Furthermore, there's no logical reason for not following the corollary from it, which is that if either party didn't have the right understanding and intention at the time, the couple have never been married, even if they subsequently live together thinking they are married, grow old acrimoniously together and faithfulness and due course die after sixty years leaving children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
One could say, and people probably do, that an inadequate intention is cured by what happens later. But if that were so, no marriage could be annulled unless one could demonstrate that no only did a party not have the right understanding and intention at the time, but at no time since, even for a moment, did they ever have even a flicker of such an understanding and intention. I have serious doubts whether that is provable. However, even if it were, the whole charade denies the fact that some people break marriages and this has serious and tragic consequences. It does not help the victims of this then to break them on the wheel of ideology.
Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on
:
Exactly mousethief. I promised to love, be faithful, share my worldly possessions with, etc. and I now cannot fulfil those promises, and there's nothing I can do about that. Picking out 'til death do us part as one part to maintain but ignoring the fact that the rest of the promises are already unfulfillable doesn't make sense. I was always willing to uphold the promises I made, but my wife decided she wasn't willing to do the same. So now I'm supposed to choose some vague masochism of enforced celibacy, beautifully described as driving with an empty passenger seat, and for what? I hope and believe that God has better intentions for me than that.
Posted by art dunce (# 9258) on
:
I was married at 19 as was the custom of girls of my low class and ethnicity. I was married to a cad who was older and everyone loved him and told me how lucky I was. He turned out to be a cocaine addict and abusive jerk. I was divorced at 22 years of age. I remarried and have been married 25 years to my best friend, we have two beautiful children who are the loves of my life. The idea that at 22 I would be condemned to walk the earth alone (my parents both died when I was still young) is ridiculous and cruel. I in no way believe that was God's plan for my life.
Posted by Russ (# 120) on
:
One of the things they used to teach on management training courses was the importance of thinking about process as well as content.
If you're attending a monthly meeting to set widget production targets, then you clearly need to think about the supply and demand of widgets - the content of the meeting. But the good manager also thinks of the process of the meeting - how to set the agenda, style of chairing the meeting etc to ensure that everybody contributes relevant ideas and the best decision is reached as efficiently as possible.
Seems to me that the Pope is talking process, not content.
Best wishes,
Russ
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