Originally posted by Golden Key:
Rossweisse--
Yes, I like Francis very much, and I've been worried about his safety for a long time.
![[Votive]](graemlins/votive.gif)
quote:finishing up the paragraph with:
The big global religious story will be the continuation of last year’s titanic struggle for the soul of the Catholic church between Pope Francis and the Vatican. I don’t know where you should put your bets
quote:Andrew Brown seems to be a relatively sensible observer of church and religion. Is this particular offering likely?
Whichever way the decision goes this time, the losing side will be convinced that the winners have betrayed the gospel. Andrew Brown
quote:So, we're all baptists now?
Whichever way the decision goes this time, the losing side will be convinced that the winners have betrayed the gospel. Andrew Brown
quote:Frankly, I expect that the "liberal" side has already put their best foot forward in the first round. They set up a totally biased organisation, (pre-)wrote summaries that summarised their opinions rather than the actual discussion, and tried to rush the event to a finish under the veil of unheard of secrecy. They basically tried to blitz the "conservatives". That will not be possible in the next round. I bet that instead of an even bigger showdown we will get a pre-negotiated "de facto annulment on demand" sold as pastoral streamlining of the current judicial process. That will save face for the conservatives, obey the letter of RC doctrine - though certainly not its spirit - and allow the liberals to further slide down the slippery slope to Protestant heresy and secular oblivion.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Andrew Brown seems to be a relatively sensible observer of church and religion. Is this particular offering likely?
quote:Don't worry. I'm laying money on him being the first person to be made a saint whilst still alive. Being Pope of Rome nowadays is an automatic path to sainthood.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Rossweisse--
Yes, I like Francis very much, and I've been worried about his safety for a long time.
quote:I'm not quite sure what you are asking there... Is there a need to change doctrine? Nope, of course not. Is there a need to change the practice of annulment? Certainly. There shouldn't be more than perhaps a few hundred "ordinary process" annulments happening in the entire world per year. (So I'm not talking about "administrative" cases: defect of form, below legal age, and other things like that - though certainly the number of those should be pushed down as much as possible as well.) I'm not quite sure what exactly our beloved bishops are blaming for vast parts of the laity apparently being so confused about RC marriage as to have theirs invalidated (>99% of all "ordinary process" annulments in the USA are due to supposed "defect of consent"). But what I say to those bishops is this: 1. Bullshit! These are just convenient lies. Stop telling them to yourself and to others. "Not knowing" and "not giving a shit" are not the same thing. 2. Given the massive backlog of questionable marriages that were created under your watch (I use the term very loosely), (a) repent in sackcloth and ashes, for it is your responsibility to guard the sacraments and the doctrine, and to guide your flock; and (b) come down like bloody ton of bricks on each and every abuse and delusion of the faith that has led to this utterly untenable situation. And I mean right now, and with no further fudging, and if people feel that they have to leave over this then bloody well have them leave. Yes, it is messy and it hurts to lance a putrid, festering wound. But you let it get to this point, so you deal with it!
Originally posted by Macrina:
IngoB, do you actually think there is any potential or need for discussion and a change in the Church's approach to Dead Horses from a conservative perspective? I ask this because I get the impression from friends of mine who hold similarly conservative Catholic views that there is not.
quote:The case we are discussing is an excellent demonstration that contra to soppy sentimentality it is the former, not pastoral fudging to achieve the latter, which in the long run keeps alive the faith. First draw clear lines in the sand, then accommodate all you want on the right side of them. If that's not enough to make some people happy, then they will just have to carry their cross.
Originally posted by Enoch:
IngoB, I realise you won't see these as a dichotomy, but if you were a bishop, which would comes first, protecting the purity of the sacraments or keeping alive the flickering faith of the sometimes rather less pure faithful?
quote:That answers my question thank you. I was seeking to understand the discussion that Conservatives wish to have with the liberal elements in the Church. I'm not sure that I'll ever share your position but it clarifies it somewhat for an outsider looking in.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:I'm not quite sure what you are asking there... Is there a need to change doctrine? Nope, of course not. Is there a need to change the practice of annulment? Certainly. There shouldn't be more than perhaps a few hundred "ordinary process" annulments happening in the entire world per year.
Originally posted by Macrina:
IngoB, do you actually think there is any potential or need for discussion and a change in the Church's approach to Dead Horses from a conservative perspective? I ask this because I get the impression from friends of mine who hold similarly conservative Catholic views that there is not.
quote:Mind you, I haven't exactly been elected the spokesman of Catholic conservatives just because I'm vociferous on SoF... I really would be more in the traditional than conservative camp, except that I'm not as deeply concerned with the liturgy and find that many trads I meet (virtually and in real life) are too ... well, sour-faced and cramped up. In my opinion the following by Hilaire Belloc must be true for you if you really want to be a traditional Catholic:
Originally posted by Macrina:
That answers my question thank you. I was seeking to understand the discussion that Conservatives wish to have with the liberal elements in the Church. I'm not sure that I'll ever share your position but it clarifies it somewhat for an outsider looking in.
quote:IANACL & IANAP. So with a grain of salt: a marriage cannot be annulled just because it is abusive. Annulment is a judgement that a marriage was never contracted in the first place, not a judgement that the marriage has failed by some criterion, or that the spouses really don't want to continue with it. (It is of course allowed by RC canon law to physically separate, and indeed to civilly divorce, in the case of abuse. One does not have to suffer abuse in the name of marriage. However, this separation does not dissolve the marriage bond, only death can.)
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Is this where it currently sits?
quote:That expression - lines in the sand - carries an implication of arbitrariness. Doesn't much matter if you draw the line here or there - it's just a boundary for the sake of having a boundary.
Originally posted by IngoB:
First draw clear lines in the sand, then accommodate all you want on the right side of them.
quote:Hang on. How is that arbitrary? The line in the sand is what one happens to believe, in the case of this thread what the RC has traditionally believed. If one happens to be on the srong side it's because they don't believe the same thing. I don't see how that's arbitrary.
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:That expression - lines in the sand - carries an implication of arbitrariness. Doesn't much matter if you draw the line here or there - it's just a boundary for the sake of having a boundary.
Originally posted by IngoB:
First draw clear lines in the sand, then accommodate all you want on the right side of them.
And I put it to you that that desire for clear boundaries, clear rules, is a north European cultural thing. Alles in Ordnung - everything in order.
Whereas good red wine is a south European product...
Best wishes,
Russ
quote:Then you are using it wrongly. It actually means to establish a condition or principle (the line) which cannot be broken (stepped over) without facing serious consequences. It is hence generally the opposite of "arbitrary", and rather indicates the point from which on someone will consider further accommodations and negotiations impossible. This usage is historical (wait past the US bit, it is actually a Roman expression). It is consequently a slur to say that someone is arbitrarily drawing lines into the sand, because it basically means that someone has no principles and merely threatens for the sake of bullying. Not that you would be particularly worried about claiming that, I guess...
Originally posted by Russ:
That expression - lines in the sand - carries an implication of arbitrariness. Doesn't much matter if you draw the line here or there - it's just a boundary for the sake of having a boundary.
quote:This is merely an ad hominem - yes, thanks, I do know that I am German and no, sorry, the Catholic doctrinal and dogmatic system did not primarily develop under Northern European oversight. But as it happens, both Belloc and I - as Northern Europeans - were playing with these cultural stereotypes to make a point.
Originally posted by Russ:
And I put it to you that that desire for clear boundaries, clear rules, is a north European cultural thing. Alles in Ordnung - everything in order. Whereas good red wine is a south European product...
quote:IngoB,
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:The case we are discussing is an excellent demonstration that contra to soppy sentimentality it is the former, not pastoral fudging to achieve the latter, which in the long run keeps alive the faith. First draw clear lines in the sand, then accommodate all you want on the right side of them. If that's not enough to make some people happy, then they will just have to carry their cross.
Originally posted by Enoch:
IngoB, I realise you won't see these as a dichotomy, but if you were a bishop, which would comes first, protecting the purity of the sacraments or keeping alive the flickering faith of the sometimes rather less pure faithful?
quote:The serious consequences would be to the Roman Catholic Church as an institution, would they not, since breaking the boundaries would weaken the church's authority, and peoples' respect for that authority - if the church could go 'soft' on this matter of principle, then what matters of principle can it uphold?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Then you are using it wrongly. It actually means to establish a condition or principle (the line) which cannot be broken (stepped over) without facing serious consequences...
Originally posted by Russ:
That expression - lines in the sand - carries an implication of arbitrariness. Doesn't much matter if you draw the line here or there - it's just a boundary for the sake of having a boundary.
quote:Denounce Trent and Vatican I. Before then Rome was still. Before then Rome was still redeemable.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Going back to the OP after this tangent on annulment, is there a reasonable chance that the present Pope can make any significant change in the attitude of the Curia?
Whatever the theological points you can waste time on as you debate, there is no question that there is a problem in the hierarchy, almost the same as the one that drove Luther 500 years ago - the problem of the pomp, fancy clothes and ornate buildings making the hierarchy uninterested in the world they live in and have influence on. All the pages IngoB can write are very interesting, but do not address the rot at the center.
Financial misdoing, avoidance of responsibility, attempting to hide misdeeds - all these are strictly opposed to the Message of Jesus. Is there any hope that the ponderous mass of the Curia can avoid the iceberg that is going to pull the rivets from the hull-plating and sink the unsinkable?
The priests and nuns trying to do their best out IRL are not being supported by their managers. How long, in this time of reveal-all, before the whole structure lists?
Annulments and divorces are only a symptom, not a root problem. Much of the "gay" problem would be reduced if simple pastoral care were allowed, whether or not those gays were to be allowed to approach the altar.
Is there a solution to the root problem?
quote:2 reasons, really. The charitable one is that they genuinely believe what they're saying to be true. The second, more prosaic, reason is that admitting that this teaching can change puts up for debate a lot of things the RCC isn't willing to risk, most of all its own claims to authoritative teaching. They've balanced the authority of the church precariously on far too many teachings, particularly on social issues, that don't stand up to scrutiny. It worked for a time as a means of backing up their decisions, but now the teachings have become so obviously detrimental they cannot let them go without the whole edifice crashing down.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Holy Smoke, don't look now; but in the Western World the people's respect for the authority of Rome has all but disappeared. In Latin America the continent is fast becoming Protestent. The Roman church no longer speaks to them.
The Church does not stand or fall on whether marriage is a sacrament. It stands on the testimony of the Resurrection of Christ. It is through that prism all things stand or fall. If a current practice takes the people's eyes off the Resurrection, why not relegate it to history?
quote:The rest is here: The Top 5 Over Covered Vatican News Stories of 2014.
In a media environment in which everything the pope says and does is a sensation, we have the opposite problem — a surfeit of bogus or minor stories treated as big news, aided and abetted by a news cycle in which no one seems to have time for fact-checking.
In that spirit, here’s a rundown of my picks for the Top 5 “Over-Covered Vatican Stories of the Year.”...
quote:To be fair to the RC, only in the eyes of secular society, which as it happens is indistinguishable from most of modern Christianity whose guide is the spirit of the age.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:2 reasons, really. The charitable one is that they genuinely believe what they're saying to be true. The second, more prosaic, reason is that admitting that this teaching can change puts up for debate a lot of things the RCC isn't willing to risk, most of all its own claims to authoritative teaching. They've balanced the authority of the church precariously on far too many teachings, particularly on social issues, that don't stand up to scrutiny. It worked for a time as a means of backing up their decisions, but now the teachings have become so obviously detrimental they cannot let them go without the whole edifice crashing down.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Holy Smoke, don't look now; but in the Western World the people's respect for the authority of Rome has all but disappeared. In Latin America the continent is fast becoming Protestent. The Roman church no longer speaks to them.
The Church does not stand or fall on whether marriage is a sacrament. It stands on the testimony of the Resurrection of Christ. It is through that prism all things stand or fall. If a current practice takes the people's eyes off the Resurrection, why not relegate it to history?
quote:You seem to be defining secular society to be everyone except the hierarchy of the RCC. Even your own Orthodox tradition allows for divorce in certain circumstances.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
To be fair to the RC, only in the eyes of secular society, which as it happens is indistinguishable from most of modern Christianity whose guide is the spirit of the age.
quote:Actually, people's respect for Rome has taken an tiny upswing with the election of Pope Francis. Whether it'll continue its trajectory depends on a lot of factors, not least of which will be the ability of the Pope to speak over the heads of the Curia and address the ordinary Catholics in the streets and favelas.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Holy Smoke, don't look now; but in the Western World the people's respect for the authority of Rome has all but disappeared.
quote:But the Christ allows for divorce under circumstances. The Church, whatever or whoever one believes it to be, has to engage with modernity (otherwise how is the Church expected to spread the Gospel?) but in the process it cannot, must not, conform to it. Unfortunately that is exactly what most modern Christians have done.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
quote:You seem to be defining secular society to be everyone except the hierarchy of the RCC. Even your own Orthodox tradition allows for divorce in certain circumstances.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
To be fair to the RC, only in the eyes of secular society, which as it happens is indistinguishable from most of modern Christianity whose guide is the spirit of the age.
quote:So Rome was "still redeemable" before that pesky Luther pointed out that the Emperor (and the Pope) had no clothes. But the point is that neither Trent nor Vatican 1 dealt with the issues that were at hand, just as IngoB and others demand now.
Denounce Trent and Vatican I. Before then Rome was still. Before then Rome was still redeemable.
quote:That's not the case. Most (if not all) Christians I know expect fidelity in marriage, chastity prior to marriage and consider divorce to be undesirable but sometimes a necessary last resort. Modern society expects promiscuity before marriage, has a very broad definition of fidelity when it has one at all (and accepts any number of excuses where it is lacking) and prefers divorce to working to save a marriage. In other words the Christians I know seek to respond in accordance with the value's Christ taught to the changes in the world, asking "what would Christ's response to this look like?" It IS fraught with the risk of conforming to the world, but fear of that should not lead us to commit the opposite error, of clinging to the spirit of the previous age as if the public morality of the 1930s (or indeed the 930s) was exactly in accord with Christianity, or turning Christ's message of love into a rulebook the Pharisees would have been proud of.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
But the Christ allows for divorce under circumstances. The Church, whatever or whoever one believes it to be, has to engage with modernity (otherwise how is the Church expected to spread the Gospel?) but in the process it cannot, must not, conform to it. Unfortunately that is exactly what most modern Christians have done.
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Ad Orientem:quote:So Rome was "still redeemable" before that pesky Luther pointed out that the Emperor (and the Pope) had no clothes. But the point is that neither Trent nor Vatican 1 dealt with the issues that were at hand, just as IngoB and others demand now.
Denounce Trent and Vatican I. Before then Rome was still. Before then Rome was still redeemable.
We could still have the joy of men in skirts praising the auto-da-fe as a means of delivering sinners a bit early for God's judgment, the threat of the Pope actually financing armies to spread his power structure, and the rejection of all science and most art from the last 500 years, all in order to say that Church always is right, even when it is wrong.
Congratulations. I hope you enjoy the stake, because there would be nothing to protect you from any accusation whatsoever. The Church then had as little to do with treating people as "equals in the sight of God" as the Curia does now. I guess some people haven't learned much from the last 500 years, except to bewail the vanished Golden Time that never was.
Oh, and for those who think that the Church has earned the right to moral persuasion, try the report that points out that 0% of British RCs look to religious leaders for guidance in decision-making: report from last year.
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quote:Perhaps, but not from Horseman Bree - because Hitler wasn't American.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I daresay if we wait long enough we'll have a Hitler reference soon ... if we haven't had one already.
quote:Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be. An empty Church can fill again, but no human power can resurrect a Church that has died.
Originally posted by JoannaP:
What is the point of keeping the sacraments pure in an empty church?
quote:I won't bother with your spewing of prejudice and trash-talking. But this is mildly interesting. What precisely did you have in mind there that is supposedly being denied now?
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Much of the "gay" problem would be reduced if simple pastoral care were allowed, whether or not those gays were to be allowed to approach the altar.
quote:True enough. Problem is that Protestantism is just a half-way house to secularism and post-Christianity. And unlike in Europe, where it took centuries for this development, in South America all this will happen way faster.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
In Latin America the continent is fast becoming Protestent. The Roman church no longer speaks to them.
quote:All of these claims are wrong. Geocentrism was never an official doctrine of the Church in spite of what happened to Galileo (and the usual way this affair is recounted is very one-sided), and the Church was one of the greatest supporters of scientific development. There is a very long history of the opposition of the RCC to slavery (though yes, not at the level modern standards would require). And usury remains a mortal sin. This gives me the opportunity to link to Zippy Catholic's usury FAQ, which I find enlightening on the subject.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Three examples: it used to teach the earth was the center of the universe--no longer (it has also embraced the scientific method long ago). It used to allow for slavery--again no longer. And it used to ban usuary, now it allows for reasonable loan rates.
quote:This is a complete misunderstanding. The sacrament is the contract, and it didn't need declaring to become one. As usual, the Church was defending ancient practice by these declarations. Sacramental marriage rites are well documented from the early Church in both East and West.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
So, for much of the Roman Church's life marriage was actually no more than a social contract in which two parties agree to the marriage.
quote:Marriage is as ancient as humanity, and does not require the Church as such. Saying that marriage has been raised to a sacrament by the Lord is shorthand for saying that Christians are not free to avail themselves of "natural" marriages, but rather are bound to the teachings of Christ in this matter, and have to live by the rules He reinstated for His faithful. It is however correct that saying "sacrament" does not as such mean "indissoluble", this rather follows from the actual teachings.
Originally posted by Enoch:
Why does it matter whether we classify marriage as a sacrament or not? Whether we say that marriage is a sacrament or whether we don't, why does that have any bearing whatsoever on whether we say a marriage CANNOT be dissolved (RC teaching) or SHOULD NOT be dissolved (everybody else's teaching)?
quote:Redeemable in that they still hadn't set their worst errors in stone. Trent and Vatican I (and Vatican II is merely a symptom of both) did that though and are irreversible (at least in the eyes of Rome) except that the Holy Spirit should bring Rome to repentance and that it confess the orthodox faith.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Ad Orientem:quote:So Rome was "still redeemable" before that pesky Luther pointed out that the Emperor (and the Pope) had no clothes. But the point is that neither Trent nor Vatican 1 dealt with the issues that were at hand, just as IngoB and others demand now.
Denounce Trent and Vatican I. Before then Rome was still. Before then Rome was still redeemable.
We could still have the joy of men in skirts praising the auto-da-fe as a means of delivering sinners a bit early for God's judgment, the threat of the Pope actually financing armies to spread his power structure, and the rejection of all science and most art from the last 500 years, all in order to say that Church always is right, even when it is wrong.
Congratulations. I hope you enjoy the stake, because there would be nothing to protect you from any accusation whatsoever. The Church then had as little to do with treating people as "equals in the sight of God" as the Curia does now. I guess some people haven't learned much from the last 500 years, except to bewail the vanished Golden Time that never was.
Oh, and for those who think that the Church has earned the right to moral persuasion, try the report that points out that 0% of British RCs look to religious leaders for guidance in decision-making: report from last year.
quote:No, I'm pretty sure the reformers were well aware of the East, that's why the 39 articles feel the need to point out that the church in the east has erred as well as Rome. I also seem to recall that the non-juring Bishops approached the Orthodox with a view to pursuing unity in the 18th century but were rebuffed once the Orthodox realised they wouldn't get the whole CofE and CofS this way.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
As for Luther and the Reformation in general, it might well have been inevitable but, lacking a proper model (for the East was but a long lost memory in the mind of the West) what followed was also inevitable: protestantism => rationalism => atheism.
quote:Well, for starters, stop proclaiming that people who are, after all, made "in the image of God" like everyone else, are unredeemable sinners, that they are a danger and a source of sickness to those who come in contact with them, and that they are responsible for the collapse of our society, which is what we hear coming from too many in the hierarchy.
quote:
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Much of the "gay" problem would be reduced if simple pastoral care were allowed, whether or not those gays were to be allowed to approach the altar.
I won't bother with your spewing of prejudice and trash-talking. But this is mildly interesting. What precisely did you have in mind there that is supposedly being denied now?
quote:Having followed these developments over an 18 month period, it was when I realised that things were going in this direction, that I lost all respect for this process. This fig leaf will be used so that everyone can claim some victory. No Church doctrine will need to be reinterpreted, but the indissolubility of marriage will become a farce. IngoB is right IMO, that annulment should be used only in its proper context, to deal with things such as consanguinity, forced marriage, lack of consent due to mental impairment, or non consummation through inability or unwillingness. This would amount to a few hundred a year. But it's after this that Ingo and I would part company. Over what to do about the many people who would remain excluded if they couldn't "regularise" their situation to the satisfaction of the Church. I suspect he would say that it's really a case of tough shit, unless you are prepared to live a lonely, sexless life forever, with no hope. Almost like eternal hell!
Originally posted by IngoB:
I bet that instead of an even bigger showdown we will get a pre-negotiated "de facto annulment on demand" sold as pastoral streamlining of the current judicial process.
quote:Jesus fought all through His ministry against the legalism of the religious system of His day. Purity laws which excluded so many from any hope of God's mercy. A sacrificial system which the poorest couldn't afford, which alone could allow for God's forgiveness. He assured people they were forgiven. Many divorces are accompanied by great sin, but the parties aren't always equally guilty. Examining, with a qualified priest, what part they may have played in the failure, and repenting of that sin, could be followed by a readmission to the full life of the Church. This is no more than Kasper proposed, and I agree with it.
Originally posted by Arethosemyfeet:
or turning Christ's message of love into a rulebook the Pharisees would have been proud of.
quote:If this is coming from many in the hierarchy, then I'm sure you could come up with some actual examples where bishops have said that sort of thing?!
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Well, for starters, stop proclaiming that people who are, after all, made "in the image of God" like everyone else, are unredeemable sinners, that they are a danger and a source of sickness to those who come in contact with them, and that they are responsible for the collapse of our society, which is what we hear coming from too many in the hierarchy.
quote:Oh, I like the sound of "published statements". Go ahead then, show us some of these many documents that declare homosexuals "not-quite-human".
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Gays are simply people, not symbols of discord and disfunction. Most parish priests are aware of this, but the published statements of too many bishops would appear to describe gays as "not-quite-human".
quote:Your question is very naive. Obviously, what has changed is not the person, but the knowledge about that person. Irrespective of what action might be justified, or not, the Church can act only on what she knows. Or do you expect her to divine that this person is actively gay and fire the organist as soon as such a prophecy is obtained? That will go down well with the work tribunals...
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
For instance: Stop throwing gay organists out of the church when they dare to admit in public that they are partnered. If they were good enough to touch the musical instruments of the church one day, and nothing has changed, why are they not good enough the next day?
quote:Again, where is your proof that the Church has done this? I'm not aware that the Church has ever, in two millennia of global existence, declared any human being as "irredeemably sinful".
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Stop accusing teens of being irredeemably sinful, and offer them pastoral advice and care, just as you would for the rest of us. Making them scapegoats for your (generic) insecurity is not the way of the Kingdom.
quote:The Church is, more or less, consistent. The problem is that many sins of the straights are not undeniably apparent. One can of course guess that many (most) straights are fornicators, contraceptors, masturbators etc. For that matter, many will be tax evaders, liars, gluttons, etc. And if most straights never - or at most once in a moonshine - make use of confession, it is fair guess that this is not the case because they are so saintly as not being in danger of sinning mortally. But none of this is written in the face of the individual. The Church is in fact not in the business of spying after the sins of people, the idea is that you self-report to get healed because you want to (just as with a doctor). I would be highly unsurprised if 75% of all people going up for communion in a regular Catholic parish should remain seated. And I wouldn't be particularly shocked if that number was 90%. But in general the Church runs a "you tell, we won't ask" policy. However, that does not mean that the Church closes her eyes to publicly available information. For example, someone seeking to remarry after a divorce from a sacramental marriage is engaging in a public act, one the Church knows about. The Church cannot simply pretend to not know about this. With gays "coming out", it depends on just how public that is. But of course, where that is turned into a public affair, like in a "gay marriage", again the Church cannot pretend to not know what is common knowledge.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Yes, there may be impediments to Communion, just as there are for many straights who are allowed to receive (but no-one says anything about THEIR sins). Be consistent.
quote:How about a canonization into Hell?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Again, where is your proof that the Church has done this? I'm not aware that the Church has ever, in two millennia of global existence, declared any human being as "irredeemably sinful".
quote:This is just all sorts of wrong. The first Index was not created for Galileo or against heliocentrism, but in reaction to the rise of Protestantism (which used the medium of printed leaflets and books to spread its heresies). The Congregation of the Index did put heliocentric works on the index during the Galileo affair (and pretty much because of Galileo having defied the request of the Holy See to publicly discuss his geocentric views as hypotheses rather than established truths, which undoubtedly they were at the time). But that Congregation was not a dogmatic institution of the Church, but more something like the agency that today produces movie ratings. I agree that classing heliocentric writings as the intellectual equivalent of porn that should be kept out of general circulation was a terribly bad move of the Church. But it did not in fact establish an official doctrine on the topic.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Regarding the Roman Church and the Geocentric Universe, when astronomers first began postulating something different, Pope Paul IV published an encyclical entiled: Index Librorum Prohibitorum (Index of Prohibited Books) calling such thoughts heretical. This was reaffirmed by the Council of Trent with their Tridentine Index.
quote:That is just a completely insufficient summary of the actual history. I have already linked to a source where you could get a rather more complete view of what actually happened, if you are interested. FWIW, I consider it one of the - largely unsung - glories of the British, not the RCC, that they practically ended the Western slave trade. So I'm not at all denying that the RCC did not play the role she probably should have played. But it is simply not true that the Church was largely inactive in this matter till the 16thC. (Incidentally, the Eastern slave trade of the Muslims was 1. much larger in numbers, 2. lasted much longer, and 3. was just leaps and bounds worse in the treatment of the slave population. If you look where the West traded slaves, you see many descendants of former black African slaves. If you go to the Middle East, you see next to none. Nobody seems to ask the Muslims questions about centuries of mass genital mutilation and basically mass murder.)
Originally posted by Gramps49:
While Thomas Acquinas first deduced slavery was a sin--and a few saints before him forbade it, it was not officially banned until 1537 under Pope Paul III.
quote:No, that is wrong. Please do read the information at the link I provided above. Usury is charging interest on a specific kind of loan, namely one where the borrower can be held personally responsible for the loan, as opposed to a loan which is borrowed against some thing. From the link given above: <<Today this kind of loan is called a “full recourse loan”, as contrasted to a “non recourse loan”. So usury is charging interest on a full recourse loan.>> And as it happens, the rejection of full recourse loans is to a big part that they amount to a kind of slavery, because you acquire rights over a person rather than a thing.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Even though Acquinas was enlightened in regards to slavery, he taught that the charging of any interest on any monitary loan was usury. This was the position of the church until about the mid 1500s as I understand it.
quote:Indeed. Rather, Protestantism is the death throes of the Latin rite RCC.
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Protestantism will not be the death of the Roman Cathoic Church.
quote:You accused many RC bishops of terrible and unChristian behaviour that is spelled out in publications. And the best you have is some random dude's blog post being upset about the Synod of the Family not discussing gays?! How about you back up your claims with some actual evidence?
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Here, play with this one. . Not quite "irredeemable", just "non-existent"
quote:This is unrelated to the claims I asked you to back up. Anyway, it is not the Church which stands in the way of these people marrying. The Church does not charge the poor for access to her sacraments. It is - or at least this is the claim - the social expectation that you have to throw a fiesta when you marry. That is what the poor cannot afford. Perhaps the Church could push harder to change these social constraints (and it is a RC priest raising this issue), but that is quite a different thing to saying that the Church herself disadvantages the poor.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
And, wandering along, looking for one kind of thing, I found this somewhat different one : "Can the poor receive Communion?"
quote:Despite being very tired, I've plowed through some of the links from that Wikipedia page. For the "canonization into Hell" it cites a story from the Spectator about the late Robert Hughes which cites an anecdote from his book The Culture of Complaint. I don't know if Hughes cites a source for his story in his book but I haven't found this "canonization into Hell" story elsewhere. It's not in the Italian Wikipedia page for Malatesta. It's not in the Italian Wikipedia page for Pope Pius II. It's not in the English Wikipedia page for Pope Pius II. It's not in Catholic Encyclopedia article cited by English Wikipedia. It's not in the Italian online biography also cited by the Wikipedia article. The excommunication is mentioned in the different links. His burning in effigy is mentioned in a couple of places. The story of of his being "canonized into hell" isn't mentioned in any of those places.
Originally posted by Ariston:
quote:How about a canonization into Hell?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Again, where is your proof that the Church has done this? I'm not aware that the Church has ever, in two millennia of global existence, declared any human being as "irredeemably sinful".
quote:"On this rock I shall build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Protestants, on the other hand, are going to be more tricky."
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Odd (but probably inevitable) that in a thread on the struggle for the soul of the Catholic church, the blame is squarely placed at the feet of those rascally Protestants.
I never knew we had such power to bring such an august and perpetual institution to its knees...
quote:Could you expand on this please? After all, while Christ did command his followers to baptise and celebrate the Eucharist, he didn't command them to take weddings, anoint the dead and so forth. He also commanded his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom, and many other things. Why do you feel the sacramental part of the Church is more important then any of the other things the Church does in obedience to Christ?
Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be.
quote:Sadly, the descendent of Sigismondo I first heard the story from (well, him and Dante) isn't available for citation. I'll grant that it may be something that got passed down as part of family tradition from time immemorial, or at least the 14th century.
Originally posted by Pancho:
quote:This is odd because it's such a dramatic, lurid story that it sounds like something out of a Hammer horror film. Maybe Hughes has a source for the story, I don't know, I don't own his book so I can't tell but if it were me I would take it with a (big) grain of salt.
Originally posted by Ariston:
quote:How about a canonization into Hell?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Again, where is your proof that the Church has done this? I'm not aware that the Church has ever, in two millennia of global existence, declared any human being as "irredeemably sinful".
quote:I don't often feel much affinity with IngoB, and quite possibly his response will be different. But it seems to me that 'all the other things' (feeding the hungry, caring for the sick etc etc), while vitally important, are not exclusively Christian virtues. I imagine that at the last judgement we will be held to account for our lack of human compassion, much more than our lack of religious observance. Nevertheless, the Church is a specific body of people called together to hear and respond to the Word of God and celebrate Christ's presence in the Eucharist. If we don't do that, there is nothing about us that distinguishes us from our non-Christian neighbours.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
IngoB:quote:…. Why do you feel the sacramental part of the Church is more important then any of the other things the Church does in obedience to Christ?
Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be.
quote:Because if you don't have sacraments, exclusive to the Church, then you don't need ordained priests, and you don't have a reason to demand that people attend church regularly, albeit that it is relatively recently that the Church has had to rely on intellectual persuasion alone to try to get people to attend (and is failing). The very real threat of physical violence or imprisonment, or at the least, social ostracism, is a far more effective means of evangelization than arguing theological niceties, I think.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
IngoB:quote:Could you expand on this please? After all, while Christ did command his followers to baptise and celebrate the Eucharist, he didn't command them to take weddings, anoint the dead and so forth. He also commanded his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom, and many other things. Why do you feel the sacramental part of the Church is more important then any of the other things the Church does in obedience to Christ?
Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be.
quote:That's the cynical view. The sacraments are medicine and if administered incorrectly are quite often dangerous.
Originally posted by Holy Smoke:
quote:Because if you don't have sacraments, exclusive to the Church, then you don't need ordained priests, and you don't have a reason to demand that people attend church regularly, albeit that it is relatively recently that the Church has had to rely on intellectual persuasion alone to try to get people to attend (and is failing). The very real threat of physical violence or imprisonment, or at the least, social ostracism, is a far more effective means of evangelization than arguing theological niceties, I think.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
IngoB:quote:Could you expand on this please? After all, while Christ did command his followers to baptise and celebrate the Eucharist, he didn't command them to take weddings, anoint the dead and so forth. He also commanded his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom, and many other things. Why do you feel the sacramental part of the Church is more important then any of the other things the Church does in obedience to Christ?
Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be.
Of course, going back to the OP, the irony of the whole situation is the presumption that people who are excluded from communion are somehow missing out, when it more than likely that the whole business of sacraments is for the benefit of the Church as an institution, rather than for the benefit of those taking part.
It is an interesting exercise to draw up a table comparing the benefits to each - one will find that the real, tangible benefits (money, loyalty, obedience, etc.) accrue to the Church, and the more shall we say intangible benefits (divine grace, salvation, forgiveness, etc.) accrue to the congregation.
quote:If one is regularly practising sacrificial giving, then the danger is minimal.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Ineffective, yes. Dangerous? Hmmm.
![[Biased]](wink.gif)
quote:Yes, dangerous.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Ineffective, yes. Dangerous? Hmmm.
quote:Hmph! Can't you see the comparison I'm making (or at least I thought it was obvious) between physical dangers of incorrectly taking physical medicine and the spiritual dangers of incorrectly taking spiritual medicine?
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I think my point is that judgement isn't instantaneous. At least, I've never seen anyone die during the distribution.
(During the Introit, yes.)
quote:It is kind about taking medicine incorrectly?
Originally posted by Martin60:
Being kind is dangerous?
quote:Well yes. But taking meds the wrong way is likely to end up with the patient ill or dead in short order. Paul loved his hyperbolic rhetoric.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:Hmph! Can't you see the comparison I'm making (or at least I thought it was obvious) between physical dangers of incorrectly taking physical medicine and the spiritual dangers of incorrectly taking spiritual medicine?
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I think my point is that judgement isn't instantaneous. At least, I've never seen anyone die during the distribution.
(During the Introit, yes.)
quote:Not so. I've personally helped people recover from taking meds long term which were supposed to help them, but in the end very nearly destroyed them. I've also watched others die, who were not helped in time or who could not be helped.
But taking meds the wrong way is likely to end up with the patient ill or dead in short order.
quote:Each person has to examine their own conscience. That is what we have confession for. The priest is not a mind reader. The responsibility therefore is primarily with the person receiving, unless the impediment to receiving the sacrament is itself public, in which case the priest also has a responsibility not to administer the sacrament, if only for the good of the would be recipient. I know I like to bring it up a lot, but think of Ambrose and Theodosius as a good example.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
How would you judge whether someone was 'eating and drinking unworthily,' Ad Orientem?
quote:Now we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I wasn't talking about Protestants receiving in an Orthodox Church or RC Church, or RC's receiving in an Orthodox Church. I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well - I can see that in terms of Theodosius being called to repentance - but I don't quite so how it equates to, say, a Protestant or RC trying to receive at an Orthodox Liturgy ...
I would be a lot happier if you simply said, 'Look, as you are not officially Orthodox and haven't been formally received into the Orthodox Church we aren't in a position to administer the sacraments to you ... because we can't really do that until you have formally accepted our beliefs and joined yourself to an Orthodox jurisdiction ...'
Rather than trotting out some shtick about it being for our spiritual benefit if we don't receive ...
That simply sounds like trying to sugar the pill to me.
Ok, I can see why you say it and how it represents a very 'high' view of the sacrament - and it's a lot better than saying, 'Look, you're not Orthodox so just sod right off ...'
But it just sounds like one of these pious platitudes to me. All traditions have them. I'm sure there are RC and Protestant equivalents.
quote:Yeah, we're talking about whether it is harmful to communicate while in a state of 'sin', and whether there is some objective truth in the injunction not to receive unworthily, or whether it is one more bit of ecclesiastical spin to make us do what the Church says. Nothing to do with 'closed communion', mate.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:Now we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I wasn't talking about Protestants receiving in an Orthodox Church or RC Church, or RC's receiving in an Orthodox Church. I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well - I can see that in terms of Theodosius being called to repentance - but I don't quite so how it equates to, say, a Protestant or RC trying to receive at an Orthodox Liturgy ...
I would be a lot happier if you simply said, 'Look, as you are not officially Orthodox and haven't been formally received into the Orthodox Church we aren't in a position to administer the sacraments to you ... because we can't really do that until you have formally accepted our beliefs and joined yourself to an Orthodox jurisdiction ...'
Rather than trotting out some shtick about it being for our spiritual benefit if we don't receive ...
That simply sounds like trying to sugar the pill to me.
Ok, I can see why you say it and how it represents a very 'high' view of the sacrament - and it's a lot better than saying, 'Look, you're not Orthodox so just sod right off ...'
But it just sounds like one of these pious platitudes to me. All traditions have them. I'm sure there are RC and Protestant equivalents.
quote:If you look hard at that quote you will notice that "unworthily" is an adverb. It describes a way of performing an action. It is not an adjective describing the person.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Yes, dangerous.
"For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh judgment to himself"
quote:And it is harmful. But then I guess it's all the same if you don't believe in sin or the efficacy of the sacraments...mate.
Originally posted by Holy Smoke:
quote:Yeah, we're talking about whether it is harmful to communicate while in a state of 'sin', and whether there is some objective truth in the injunction not to receive unworthily, or whether it is one more bit of ecclesiastical spin to make us do what the Church says. Nothing to do with 'closed communion', mate.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
quote:Now we seem to be talking at cross purposes. I wasn't talking about Protestants receiving in an Orthodox Church or RC Church, or RC's receiving in an Orthodox Church. I'm not sure how that's relevant to this discussion.
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well - I can see that in terms of Theodosius being called to repentance - but I don't quite so how it equates to, say, a Protestant or RC trying to receive at an Orthodox Liturgy ...
I would be a lot happier if you simply said, 'Look, as you are not officially Orthodox and haven't been formally received into the Orthodox Church we aren't in a position to administer the sacraments to you ... because we can't really do that until you have formally accepted our beliefs and joined yourself to an Orthodox jurisdiction ...'
Rather than trotting out some shtick about it being for our spiritual benefit if we don't receive ...
That simply sounds like trying to sugar the pill to me.
Ok, I can see why you say it and how it represents a very 'high' view of the sacrament - and it's a lot better than saying, 'Look, you're not Orthodox so just sod right off ...'
But it just sounds like one of these pious platitudes to me. All traditions have them. I'm sure there are RC and Protestant equivalents.
quote:I don't think one can 'buy' grace any more by doing lots of sacrificial giving, than by ceremonially killing animals or doing anything else performed as a religious exercise. The amount of any cost to oneself does not make something any more objectively virtuous or add to its moral virtue.
Originally posted by Holy Smoke:
If one is regularly practising sacrificial giving, then the danger is minimal.
quote:You quoted everything from before except for the part where I point out that I couldn't find that story in the notes, links and related English and Italian wiki articles, including a relatively detailed online biography in Italian, except for that one note that cites an unlinked Spectator article that shares a story from a Robert Hughes book.
Originally posted by Ariston:
quote:Sadly, the descendent of Sigismondo I first heard the story from (well, him and Dante) isn't available for citation. I'll grant that it may be something that got passed down as part of family tradition from time immemorial, or at least the 14th century.
Originally posted by Pancho:
quote:This is odd because it's such a dramatic, lurid story that it sounds like something out of a Hammer horror film. Maybe Hughes has a source for the story, I don't know, I don't own his book so I can't tell but if it were me I would take it with a (big) grain of salt.
Originally posted by Ariston:
quote:How about a canonization into Hell?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Again, where is your proof that the Church has done this? I'm not aware that the Church has ever, in two millennia of global existence, declared any human being as "irredeemably sinful".
quote:Sigismondo Malatesta lived in the 15th century. Dante Alighieri lived in the 13th and 14th centuries. Are you sure you are thinking of the right person?
...the descendent of Sigismondo I first heard the story from (well, him and Dante)...
quote:I believe that Christ instituted all seven sacraments as essential to the life of His Church, and that He did so personally, at least in an inchoate form. And no, I don't particularly care to what extent this has been documented in the bible. I do not think that scripture was intended to detail the Christian religion like a rule book, and I leave such straining for scriptural gnats to those Christians who had to reject Christian tradition as equal means to God's truth in order to escape the authority of the Church.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
After all, while Christ did command his followers to baptise and celebrate the Eucharist, he didn't command them to take weddings, anoint the dead and so forth.
quote:The sacraments are the only instituted means of receiving grace from God. Of course, God can give you grace apart from the sacraments as He sees fit, but no other human action is as such Divinely favoured with guaranteed graces. Doing good works is an expression of the graces you have received from God - and this response can gain you merit in the eyes of God. In particular, it can merit you more graces, hopefully leading to a cycle of grace and charity culminating in your salvation. But any such virtuous cycle needs a starting point, and the sacraments are preeminent in this regard. Furthermore, only the sacraments are certain to provide sanctifying grace. Whether your good works will gain you heaven is anybody's guess and God's knowledge alone, but a freshly baptised person, or a baptised person just after a proper confession and absolution, who then dies, will go to heaven. No ifs, buts, and whys.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
He also commanded his followers to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, proclaim the arrival of the Kingdom, and many other things. Why do you feel the sacramental part of the Church is more important then any of the other things the Church does in obedience to Christ?
quote:Dolce, shurely?
Originally posted by Martin60:
He means a descendant of both. I have friends who are descendants of Dante only. Well they must be of Malatesta too. 600 years gives you 16 million ancestors. So we're all our own cousins. But Dante is their family name. Like the egregious Wassamaddayou Joe.
quote:
There should be recognition of a diversity of forms. We have to look inside the church for a formal recognition of the kind of interpersonal relationship that is also present in many gay couples. Just as there are a variety of legal frameworks for partners in civil society, one must arrive at a diversity of forms in the church. … The intrinsic values are more important to me than the institutional question. The Christian ethic is based on lasting relationships where exclusivity, loyalty, and care are central to each other.
quote:How are ELCA's numbers over the past decade, then?
Originally posted by Gramps49:
Speaking as a Lutheran I find the Roman Church is at a crossroads. It can continue to be so rigid that it becomes obsolete; or it can become so loose it can run into secular oblivion as pointed out above.
quote:Shouldn't he be sacked?
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
To be fair, I have to report on this bishop's statement, or, at least, to relay the report:
"Heads explode" makes an interesting headline
quote:
There should be recognition of a diversity of forms. We have to look inside the church for a formal recognition of the kind of interpersonal relationship that is also present in many gay couples. Just as there are a variety of legal frameworks for partners in civil society, one must arrive at a diversity of forms in the church. … The intrinsic values are more important to me than the institutional question. The Christian ethic is based on lasting relationships where exclusivity, loyalty, and care are central to each other.
quote:Posting as a Shipmate.
Originally posted by IngoB:
The sacraments are the only instituted means of receiving grace from God. Of course, God can give you grace apart from the sacraments as He sees fit, but no other human action is as such Divinely favoured with guaranteed graces. Doing good works is an expression of the graces you have received from God - and this response can gain you merit in the eyes of God. In particular, it can merit you more graces, hopefully leading to a cycle of grace and charity culminating in your salvation. But any such virtuous cycle needs a starting point, and the sacraments are preeminent in this regard. Furthermore, only the sacraments are certain to provide sanctifying grace. Whether your good works will gain you heaven is anybody's guess and God's knowledge alone, but a freshly baptised person, or a baptised person just after a proper confession and absolution, who then dies, will go to heaven. No ifs, buts, and whys.
The sacraments provide a solid foundation of grace. For sure, one only lays foundations in order to build upon them. Yet a small cabin erected on rock solid foundations is better than a palace built on sand, when the storms come. And they will, for most of us.
quote:While I accept that the Bible is not a complete record of the life and ministry of Jesus, I would like to know why you believe this. There must be many traditions of which I am unaware; could you point me in the right direction in order to find out more?
I believe that Christ instituted all seven sacraments as essential to the life of His Church, and that He did so personally, at least in an inchoate form.
quote:What about prayer? Our Lord commanded us to do that; is that not a means of receiving grace? Many Protestants would want to add reading the Bible as the preeminent way of receiving grace, but I'm not sure how that fits into the RC view.
The sacraments are the only instituted means of receiving grace from God.
quote:Even if it 'needed' reforming, and one were inclined to reform it, I see no way it could be reformed. The relationship IngoB lays out is basic Catholic doctrine, and has been for virtually the church's entire history. I'd imagine the answer is that the church does not view itself as having the authority to reform that.
Whatever his reforming intentions may be, I haven't personally seen any signs that he wishes to reform this central understanding of the relationship between the sacraments and Divine grace.
quote:I'm not entirely sure what you are looking for there. Background: that Christ has instituted all seven sacraments is "de fide" (of faith) for Catholics, contrary opinion is anathematised by the Council of Trent (Decree on Sacraments, Canon 1); but that He has done so directly and personally is only "sententia theologice certa", according to Ott. The only serious contention in this regard among Catholic however concerns the sacraments of confirmation and anointing of the sick, which some theologians have considered as being instituted by the apostles inspired by the Holy Spirit (Petrus Lombardus, Bonaventura, ...). The strong majority of tradition is however with the direct institution of all sacraments. You can look at the Catholic Encyclopaedia, which has a detailed discussion for each of the seven sacraments (Baptism, Confirmation, etc.). Scripture documents the direct institution of baptism, Eucharist, and confession by Christ. It shows the other four sacraments to be present in apostolic times, and it shows the apostles as stewards, not originators, of the sacraments (1 Cor 4:1). There is no suggestion anywhere among the Church Fathers that the apostles (or even later bishops) instituted the sacraments, whereas all of them get discussed and referenced from early on by them. It is as usual difficult to find a direct proof for that which was not under debate, but St Ambrose writes in De Sacramentis ("On the Sacraments") IV, 4, 13: "Therefore, who is the author of the sacraments but the Lord Jesus? Those sacraments came down from heaven, for all counsel is from heaven."
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
While I accept that the Bible is not a complete record of the life and ministry of Jesus, I would like to know why you believe this. There must be many traditions of which I am unaware; could you point me in the right direction in order to find out more?
quote:Here's a prayer, how many graces do your think it will bring? Tongue in cheek of course, but I hope my point is clear: what graces a prayer may bring we do not know, and it will certainly depend on what kind of prayer it is. Indeed, we can easily imagine prayer that will be frowned on by God. And we can also imagine a worthy prayer stripped of the graces it ought to bring because of the way it is being prayed, or the state of the person praying. Whereas the sacraments are sure means of grace, indeed, they operate independent of the minister of the sacrament. The only requirement for them to work is that they are "performed" correctly. (Of course, whether the graces so released will affect anything depends on the recipient.)
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
What about prayer? Our Lord commanded us to do that; is that not a means of receiving grace?
quote:Well, half an hour of bible study will potentially gain you a plenary indulgence. So it's certainly highly appreciated by the Church. But indulgences are precisely a matter of the Church trying to encourage things (and by virtue of her standing with God being able to bring about certain things), it is not a matter of Divine grace as such. As far as that goes, I would comment similarly as concerning prayer - though obviously there is more scope for "wrong" prayer than for "wrong" bible reading. Still, we can think of say a militant atheist reading the bible with the intention to hunt for contradictions that he can post mockingly on his blog. It is unlikely that God will shower him with graces for doing that.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Many Protestants would want to add reading the Bible as the preeminent way of receiving grace, but I'm not sure how that fits into the RC view.
quote:I have seen no sign so far that Pope Francis is messing directly with the general Catholic approach to the sacraments.
Originally posted by Barnabas62:
Whatever his reforming intentions may be, I haven't personally seen any signs that he wishes to reform this central understanding of the relationship between the sacraments and Divine grace. So I don't think that issue is a part of any perceived "titanic struggle". Or am I missing something?
quote:No, no and no.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Indeed, we can easily imagine prayer that will be frowned on by God. And we can also imagine a worthy prayer stripped of the graces it ought to bring because of the way it is being prayed, or the state of the person praying. Whereas the sacraments are sure means of grace, indeed, they operate independent of the minister of the sacrament. The only requirement for them to work is that they are "performed" correctly. (Of course, whether the graces so released will affect anything depends on the recipient.)
I really think that sacraments are like the staple of Christian life.
quote:Prayer is communication with God. The mere fact that you are "talking" does not however mean that you are communicating well. Of course, if you define prayer as communicating well with God, then unsurprisingly prayer will be ever pleasing to God. But it is simply not true that we always communicate well, not with other humans, and not with God either. Perhaps it is time to revisit the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying? (Lk 18:9-14) The Pharisee surely was praying, and I certainly can imagine God frowning at that prayer.
Originally posted by Russ:
Prayer, if I have understood aright, is the lifting of the heart and mind to God. At which it is hard to imagine Him frowning.
quote:The sacraments match every aspect of human life: the liminal - birth (baptism), adulthood (confirmation), illness, ageing and death (anointing of the sick) - the everyday - eating and drinking (Eucharist), washing and recovering from sickness (confession), and that which is both - relationship and procreation (marriage and hold orders). They are designed as a universal and continuous support structure for a life of faith, from the cradle to the grave, every step of the way.
Originally posted by Russ:
Sacraments are more like birthday cake than potato - celebrating special moments.
quote:Sacraments realise what they symbolise. That's what sets them apart from mere symbols. Baptism is not just a symbolic washing, it actually cleanses you: of sin, not of dirt. Etc.
Originally posted by Russ:
Sacraments are symbolic actions.
quote:It is precisely by faith that we are certain that the sacraments provide the graces they promise. Whether we receive these graces fruitfully is a different matter.
Originally posted by Russ:
The beneficial effect of the sacrament is something we trust to God for - faith, not certainty.
quote:Magic is either trickery, or a preternatural effect caused by the power of the agent invoking it. The sacraments are neither. They are supernatural and caused by the power of God in response to the human agent. That said, indeed "magic" as we know it from stories (rather than tricksters) is rather similar. In particular, neither the supposed occult not the actual Divine powers can be obtained in any manner the human agent wishes. It is by obeying their form that the human agent can bring them about.
Originally posted by Russ:
Your misplaced emphasis on performing the rite "by the book" as the guarantor of efficacy turns religion into magic.
quote:Your faith was mutilated in the 16thC. I merely know as well that which you have lost.
Originally posted by Russ:
You know so much; how can you be so wrong on this ?
quote:A very moving statement that needs repeating until it sinks in with some people.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
The following may not be fully true for some countries that Shipmates live in, but it is true enough even in those cases to be necessary to say: Distorted Love
quote:"God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess."
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:No, no and no.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Indeed, we can easily imagine prayer that will be frowned on by God. And we can also imagine a worthy prayer stripped of the graces it ought to bring because of the way it is being prayed, or the state of the person praying. Whereas the sacraments are sure means of grace, indeed, they operate independent of the minister of the sacrament. The only requirement for them to work is that they are "performed" correctly. (Of course, whether the graces so released will affect anything depends on the recipient.)
I really think that sacraments are like the staple of Christian life.
Prayer, if I have understood aright, is the lifting of the heart and mind to God. At which it is hard to imagine Him frowning.
quote:Wow. Who knew Russ was so old. And surely a contradiction; to know 'merely' that which someone has - allegedly - lost in terms of their relationship with God? Wouldn't one require a somewhat omniscient knowledge to even approach that one?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Your faith was mutilated in the 16thC. I merely know as well that which you have lost.
quote:I'll be the first to admit I wish I had posted this clever quote before you did, Fr. Weber, but I don't really think Jesus would have said this was lifting one's heart and mind to God, which is the definition Russ is positing for prayer. Perhaps it is the definition that is at fault, but when one starts talking about "real" or "genuine" prayer as opposed to whatever the opposite would be, I start getting nervous--it's a judgment I prefer not to make.
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
"God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess."
quote:However, please forgive me if I say this sounds like special pleading. Penicillin is a sure remedy against infection, whether I receive it faithfully or not. If the sacraments can blocked by our attitudes, then they do not seem to be as powerful as you had suggested earlier.
It is precisely by faith that we are certain that the sacraments provide the graces they promise. Whether we receive these graces fruitfully is a different matter.
quote:Russ isn't that old, but the various Protestant heresies are (and for present purposes Anglicans belong into this mix). Russ' faith is hence institutionally defective as far as the sacraments go. Furthermore, he appears to personally embrace and defend these defects as an advance (which is only logical, I would as well if I was a Protestant of some stripe). I do not need omniscience to know all that, I only need to know a bit of ecclesial history and listen to what he says. I'm a bit mystified why you think this presents any kind of difficulty, really?
Originally posted by Anselmina:
quote:Wow. Who knew Russ was so old. And surely a contradiction; to know 'merely' that which someone has - allegedly - lost in terms of their relationship with God? Wouldn't one require a somewhat omniscient knowledge to even approach that one?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Your faith was mutilated in the 16thC. I merely know as well that which you have lost.
quote:And I will be the first to point out that I did beat Fr. Weber to the punch.
Originally posted by Organ Builder:
I'll be the first to admit I wish I had posted this clever quote before you did, Fr. Weber, but I don't really think Jesus would have said this was lifting one's heart and mind to God, which is the definition Russ is positing for prayer. Perhaps it is the definition that is at fault, but when one starts talking about "real" or "genuine" prayer as opposed to whatever the opposite would be, I start getting nervous--it's a judgment I prefer not to make.
We are not generally called to judge the prayer of others. That's a different issue, which in fact the very same parable warns again. But that does not mean that discernment is impossible or indeed unnecessary. You should not heap up empty phrases in your prayer (Mt 6:7-8), you should not pray to feed your passions (Jas 4:3), you should pray in communal anger and quarrel (1 Tim 2:8), you should pray to advertise you piety to others (Mt 6:5-6), you should not give up in your prayers (Lk 18:1-8, plus many others), you should not pray in doubt but in faith (Jas 1:5-7, I'm sure many here will love that one...), etc. Anyhow, my point was quite simply that not every prayer is good, which I consider to be an established fact of revelation. Hence we know that not all prayers will bring grace. Whereas every sacrament brings specific graces assigned to it, that's basically its definition by Divine guarantee. Hence the sacraments are the sure foundation upon which a holy life is to be built. It does not follow from this at all that prayer, good works, etc. are somehow unnecessary. That would be like having foundations, but not building a house on it. That's no way to live. You build foundations so that you can build a solid house, and you partake in the sacraments so that you can live a good Christian life. Still, this solid basis lends its strength to what you build on top of it.quote:I'm sure Fred Phelps prayed a lot in his life. Nevertheless, I would not consider him to be an exemplary man. From Adam and Eve, whom tradition considers to have been "super-graced" at quite fantastical levels, humans have been rejecting God's supernatural gifts over and over and over again. There are two aspects to a gift: that it is given, and that it is received. If either is lacking, then it will not arrive. To say that God always gives a gift under specific circumstances is not to say that every human always receives a gift under the same circumstances.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
IngoB, I'm not sure about your claim that the sacraments are "sure means of grace". If we look at the Borgias (hoping this isn't the ecclesiastical equivalent of Godwin's Law) they must have taken Mass many times, not to mention the rest of the group, but they are hardly shining lights of virtue.
quote:If the doctor gives you penicillin tablets to take three times daily, and you throw them in the garbage bin, will your infection clear up? Whose fault is that? The doctor's? Is the penicillin wasting in the garbage bin while you continue to be sick demonstration that it lacks antibiotic powers?
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
However, please forgive me if I say this sounds like special pleading. Penicillin is a sure remedy against infection, whether I receive it faithfully or not. If the sacraments can blocked by our attitudes, then they do not seem to be as powerful as you had suggested earlier.
quote:Agreed.
We suck, harmoniously, together at realising God's graces...
quote:Could you agree that sacraments are what we specifically need Church for?
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
certainly I can't see any reason to agree with your claim that, "Without pure sacraments the Church simply ceases to be".
quote:Sorry, but are you totally discounting both the Quakers and the Salvation Army as being churches?
Indeed, without the sacraments there is no Church.
quote:Please don't make me answer that, though I'm sure you can discern enough from that to know what I believe.
Originally posted by Urfshyne:
Ad Orientemquote:Sorry, but are you totally discounting both the Quakers and the Salvation Army as being churches?
Indeed, without the sacraments there is no Church.
quote:Because I believe that the Church is visible. What makes the Church visible? The sacraments. That's not to diminish the importance of good works, but even unbelievers feed the hungry etc. What distinguishes the Church from them is the visible means of grace Christ has given us. "One body and one Spirit; as you are called in one hope of your calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism". "No man lighteth a candle, and putteth it in a hidden place, nor under a bushel; but upon a candlestick, that they that come in, may see the light".
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Ad Orientem, yes, I'm pretty sure I know what your answer would be. What interests me (and this applies to IngoB as well) is why you think your answer is the right one. The claim that "without the sacraments there is no Church" is not self-evidently true to me, so I would be grateful if you could explain your reasons for believing it.
quote:Organisation doesn't make the Church. The Holy Spirit defines the Church. What makes a sacrament a sacrament? The Holy Spirit does. Even though I might have a stricter definition of who and what the Church is, that does not mean that I believe all those outside to be non-Christian. But then again "Christian" is rather a loose term. I would argue that the only way of salvation we know for sure is through the Church, precisely because of the sacraments. Whether or not God saves anyone outside is his business and his alone.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
But the fact that they identify as Quakers indicates that they are part of an organised group that has faith in the teachings of Jesus. Does this make them a church?
Or is the offering of pressed-cardboard wafers and the cheapest red plonk one can find a necessary part of being "Church"?
In the latter case, you are leaving out the whole range of Baptists and others who favor Wonder Bread and the products of Mr. Welch.
How far down this road of declaring everyone to be non-Christian do we have to go? Personally, and referring to G&S, "I have a little list", but I doubt that it would meet much enthusiasm anywhere else!
quote:In the UK we don't corporately describe ourselves as a Christian church - you might find this interesting.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
But the fact that they identify as Quakers indicates that they are part of an organised group that has faith in the teachings of Jesus. Does this make them a church?
Or is the offering of pressed-cardboard wafers and the cheapest red plonk one can find a necessary part of being "Church"?
In the latter case, you are leaving out the whole range of Baptists and others who favor Wonder Bread and the products of Mr. Welch.
How far down this road of declaring everyone to be non-Christian do we have to go? Personally, and referring to G&S, "I have a little list", but I doubt that it would meet much enthusiasm anywhere else!
quote:If you mean that my faith is less institutionalised than yours, then yes.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Russ' faith is hence institutionally defective as far as the sacraments go.
quote:Yes. Individually and collectively. In present, past and future equally. It's when you try to exempt the Vatican, or Tradition, or the Fathers of the Church, or anyone else, from the universal human condition of suckiness, that you fall short.
We suck, harmoniously, together at realising God's graces...
quote:Yes. (Well I am, anyway.)
Originally posted by Urfshyne:
Ad Orientemquote:Sorry, but are you totally discounting both the Quakers and the Salvation Army as being churches?
Indeed, without the sacraments there is no Church.
quote:Ditto. And the Quakers don't even claim to be Christian anymore, let alone part of the Church.
Originally posted by k-mann:
quote:Yes. (Well I am, anyway.)
Originally posted by Urfshyne:
Ad Orientemquote:Sorry, but are you totally discounting both the Quakers and the Salvation Army as being churches?
Indeed, without the sacraments there is no Church.
quote:The view from within Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) of various (from their POV) heterodox communities outside their respective folds isn't, so far as I can see, part of the "titanic struggle" referred to in this article.
If Francis wins, he and his reforming party will change the interpretation of the church’s hard line on divorce and remarriage. The words will remain, of course, more sacred than ever, but in practice divorced and remarried Catholics will be admitted to communion and their present marriages treated as valid and in need of nurturing. If he loses, the church will maintain its logically perfect but wholly unworkable and dishonest theory of sexuality.
quote:I do what now?!
Originally posted by Russ:
It's when you try to exempt the Vatican, or Tradition, or the Fathers of the Church, or anyone else, from the universal human condition of suckiness, that you fall short.
quote:Surely, if he decides it stays the same, it stays the same. If he decides it will change, it has always been changed and the Church is simply recognising that...
Originally posted by Enoch:
If the Pope decides the teaching on remarriage (say) must stay the same, it stays the same. If he decides it will change, it changes. Those Catholics who are traditionalists and would rather he had decided differently, must obey and change with him.
quote:Must be a disappoinment for you when you get there and find it's all not-yet-holy people seeking but not necessarily succeeding in rightly expounding the Gospel...
Originally posted by k-mann:
The Church is, in Lutheran terms, the gathering of God's holy people as they gather for the right preaching the Gospel and the right administration of the sacraments.
quote:Why? It is decidedly not Catholic teaching that the pope gets everything right.
Originally posted by Enoch:
I can't see how one can be a Catholic and argue that the Pope has got something wrong.
quote:Point to a single official document of the RCC that supports your claim. You cannot. So why do you make this completely unsupported claim, even if actual Catholics tell you that it is wrong?
Originally posted by Enoch:
The thought that either oneself, or a group of people one associates with, might know better than the Pope is being a Protestant in Catholic clothing.
quote:
Melchior Cano, a Theologian at the Council of Trent (via Rorate Caeli):
Now it can be said briefly that those who defend blindly and indiscriminately any judgment whatsoever of the Supreme Pontiff concerning every matter weaken the authority of the Apostolic See; they do not support it; they subvert it; they do not fortify it… . Peter has no need of our lies; he has no need of our adulation.
quote:Your problem is quite simply a lack of distinction. It is one thing to say what has to happen among the faithful when the pope decides things. And all the teachings about "ex cathedra" and "obsequium fide" (obedience of faith) pertain to that. It is quite another thing to discuss what sort of things a pope can decide. And the simple answer, as far as doctrine is concerned, is "not very much". In particular, any actual dogma of the Church is entirely irreversible. At most a pope can decide to elevate a particular interpretation of existing dogma to the level of standard pastoral practice. But a pope cannot say: this dogma was wrong, here, use this one instead. For that matter, neither can a pope simply step outside of tradition and declare doctrine about whatever he pleases. The pope cannot for example tomorrow state that painting birch trees red is the central practice of Christianity. The only sort of decision a pope can actually make are those which expound, clarify and make explicit the once given deposit of faith. There is, of course, still plenty of room in that. But it is far cry from some arbitrary dogma making power.
Originally posted by Enoch:
If the Pope decides the teaching on remarriage (say) must stay the same, it stays the same. If he decides it will change, it changes. Those Catholics who are traditionalists and would rather he had decided differently, must obey and change with him. I don't agree with that approach to theology. But I'm not a Catholic.
quote:
1st Vatican Council
If anyone says that it is possible that at some time, given the advancement of knowledge, a sense may be assigned to the dogmas propounded by the Church which is different from that which the Church has understood and understands: let him be anathema.
Mortalium Animos
For the teaching authority of the Church, which in the divine wisdom was constituted on earth in order that revealed doctrines might remain intact for ever, and that they might be brought with ease and security to the knowledge of men, and which is daily exercised through the Roman Pontiff and the Bishops who are in communion with him, has also the office of defining, when it sees fit, any truth with solemn rites and decrees, whenever this is necessary either to oppose the errors or the attacks of heretics, or more clearly and in greater detail to stamp the minds of the faithful with the articles of sacred doctrine which have been explained. But in the use of this extraordinary teaching authority no newly invented matter is brought in, nor is anything new added to the number of those truths which are at least implicitly contained in the deposit of Revelation, divinely handed down to the Church: only those which are made clear which perhaps may still seem obscure to some, or that which some have previously called into question is declared to be of faith.
Ineffabilis Deus
For the Church of Christ, watchful guardian that she is, and defender of the dogmas deposited with her, never changes anything, never diminishes anything, never adds anything to them; but with all diligence she treats the ancient documents faithfully and wisely; if they really are of ancient origin and if the faith of the Fathers has transmitted them, she strives to investigate and explain them in such a way that the ancient dogmas of heavenly doctrine will be made evident and clear, but will retain their full, integral, and proper nature, and will grown only within their own genus -- that is, within the same dogma, in the same sense and the same meaning.
Oath against Modernism
Fourthly, I sincerely hold that the doctrine of faith was handed down to us from the apostles through the orthodox Fathers in exactly the same meaning and always in the same purport. Therefore, I entirely reject the heretical' misrepresentation that dogmas evolve and change from one meaning to another different from the one which the Church held previously. I also condemn every error according to which, in place of the divine deposit which has been given to the spouse of Christ to be carefully guarded by her, there is put a philosophical figment or product of a human conscience that has gradually been developed by human effort and will continue to develop indefinitely.
Pascendi Dominici Gregis
But for Catholics the second Council of Nicea will always have the force of law, where it condemns those who dare, after the impious fashion of heretics, to deride the ecclesiastical traditions, to invent novelties of some kind . . . or endeavour by malice or craft to overthrow any one of the legitimate traditions of the Catholic Church; and Catholics will hold for law, also, the profession of the fourth Council of Constantinople: We therefore profess to conserve and guard the rules bequeathed to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church by the Holy and most illustrious Apostles, by the orthodox Councils, both general and local, and by every one of those divine interpreters the Fathers and Doctors of the Church. Wherefore the Roman Pontiffs, Pius IV. and Pius IX., ordered the insertion in the profession of faith of the following declaration: I most firmly admit and embrace the apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions and other observances and constitutions of the Church.
quote:In my experience, observations like this are usually used to excuse laxity in doctrine and morality, and to browbeat those who insist that there are certain truths of the Christian religion which are non-negotiable.
Originally posted by Alisdair:
The problems encountered by Jesus through the Pharisees have not gone away.
quote:It seems to me many of the biblical Pharisees might just as well have been able to say to Jesus, "In my experience, observations like this are usually used to excuse laxity in doctrine and morality, and to browbeat those who insist that there are certain truths of the Jewish religion which are non-negotiable."
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
In my experience, observations like this are usually used to excuse laxity in doctrine and morality, and to browbeat those who insist that there are certain truths of the Christian religion which are non-negotiable.
quote:Indeed
Originally posted by Alisdair:
The problems encountered by Jesus through the Pharisees have not gone away.
quote:Do we have a Biblical example of the Pharisees 'arguing rules into irrelevance'?
Fr Weber: And "pharasaical" is a two-edged sword; if it falls upon those who insist on sticking to rules, then it falls equally upon those who try to argue those rules into irrelevance.
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
quote:Well, we have plenty of Biblical examples of the Pharisees sticking to the rules. When you claim that this is a double-edged sword and that the Pharisees can also be used as an example against 'arguing rules into irrelevance', I wonder what you base this claim on.
Fr Weber: Why a biblical example, other than that you knew that would be difficult?
quote:I would not urge on anyone the sort of absolute-monarch view of the papal office that Enoch is suggesting.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:If a pope unwisely attempts to bind and loosen the faithful on matters not of received Christian faith and morals, then it is perfectly licit to ignore or even oppose him. If a pope illicitly tries to reverse a dogma of Christian faith and morals that has been established previously, then it is a moral and religious duty of the Christian faithful to oppose him.
Originally posted by Enoch:
I can't see how one can be a Catholic and argue that the Pope has got something wrong.
quote:
Originally posted by Russ:
... I'm sure you can see that the sort of Catholic who talks up the authority of the Pope ("Rome has spoken, the case is closed") when they agree with the Pope's underlying worldview, but raises a whole lot of reservations when they get a Pope they don't agree with, can come across as less than totally honest and consistent. ...
quote:The problem with all these discussions is that unless I give some totally clear-cut rules that one can follow automatically without any thought, you will claim that I'm making arbitrary distinctions. But neither is there such a set of rules nor are the distinctions arbitrary. Nobody who has bothered looking at the historical Church and her teachings could come to the conclusion that sexual morals in general, and contraception in particular, is not a valid field for potential papal teachings. That's just dumb, and rhetorics aside, you of course know that it is. There is long history of concern with such questions in the Church. What is required here is hence informed and faithful judgement. And there is no cookie-cutter rule for what that means. In the end however any judgement we make will be private. That is unavoidable.
Originally posted by Russ:
Here you seem to be advocating private judgment as to the domain within which the Pope's words should be taken as authoritative. So that, for example, were a Catholic to conclude that choice of method of contraception is not a moral issue and not an issue that forms part of the faith that comes to us from the apostles, then it would be perfectly licit to ignore papal teaching on this issue.
quote:The "ultra-conservatism" I quoted - rather than your caricature thereof - is simply Catholic, and all contrary is straight-up anathema, as per 1st Vatican, 2nd Nicaea, and 4th Constantinople.
Originally posted by Russ:
The passages you quote suggest a bunch of people who are terrified by the possibility of abandoning a time-honoured position in favour of what might turn out to be (horror!) merely the latest cultural fad. Whilst being totally unguarded as to the opposite risk of bringing Christian faith into disrepute by linking it inextricably with the discredited cosmology and philosophy of an earlier age. Is this ultra-conservatism one of the contending titans ?
quote:Once more you demand clear rules that cannot exist. However, generally speaking it is much easier to show that the pope is illogical than that he is unjust. It is much easier to show that the pope acts against tradition than that he lacks mercy. And in case of doubt one should side with the accused. Furthermore, the personal failings of a pope, or even his blunders in ecclesial government, are not in the same category of concern to me as his potential changes of doctrine. Because those changes will affect me and all the faithful, until Christ comes again. Whereas his other contemporary failures tend to wash out of the system with time.
Originally posted by Russ:
Do you mean that it's OK to disagree with the Pope if you think he's not being traditional enough, but not-OK to disagree with him for not being just or merciful or consistent with the evidence or logically sound enough ? And if so, what does that say about your value system ? Where is your treasure ?
quote:I know what to expect of Russ, but you are painting yourself into a corner here. Who exactly of the >1 billion Catholics is following the pope in the Enoch-approved manner? The liberals aren't. The culturalists aren't. The conservatives aren't. The traditionalists aren't. Maybe it makes you happy to think that the RCC is crypto-Protestant throughout by your idea of Catholicism. But if no Catholic agrees with you, then what precisely is the point of that?
Originally posted by Enoch:
Well put. Either that or fooling themselves.
quote:And proof of that claim is provided by what, precisely? The Orthodox denial of any development of doctrine and discipline whatsoever - unless it is Palamite, or Nikonian, or Alexian... ?
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
In theory, at least, the pope is only the servant of tradition. In practice, however, tradition is whatever the pope says it is, even if it contradicts that which was held to before, in which case it's put down to being merely a "developing understanding of tradition" or some other nonsense of some sort.
quote:Utter nonsense and nothing more than the usual ignorant and stupid Protestant caricature of Catholicism.
Originally posted by Enoch:
IngoB and others, I've said this before on other threads, and in various different ways. I'm going to say it again.
I can't see how one can be a Catholic and argue that the Pope has got something wrong.
If the Pope says the Catholic Church has got to change its line on something, then a good Catholic, and particularly a traditionalist one, must accept that. The thought that either oneself, or a group of people one associates with, might know better than the Pope is being a Protestant in Catholic clothing.
So long as the Pope has not decided, Catholics can and should debate these things. You all, even the unmarried mother in a Brazilian barrio, have a part to play in helping him discern. It's particularly inspiring that he has asked you to do so. But if he does decide, that's like having a Bull delivered with your morning papers. If the Pope decides the teaching on remarriage (say) must stay the same, it stays the same. If he decides it will change, it changes. Those Catholics who are traditionalists and would rather he had decided differently, must obey and change with him.
I don't agree with that approach to theology. But I'm not a Catholic.
quote:And once upon a time the bishop of Rome was Orthodox, yet he didn't claim immediate jurisdiction over the whole Church and neither did he claim infalibility.
Originally posted by Forthview:
Even for the Orthodox the bishop of Rome has played a major part in the history of the Christian church.Many great minds have accepted the teachings of the papacy.Whilst that in no way makes these teachings true,it does at least indicate that they should not be dismissed airily as 'nonsense of some sort'.
quote:Not true - some did, some didn't, hence the disagreement between Shammai and Hillel
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
quote:Indeed
Originally posted by Alisdair:
The problems encountered by Jesus through the Pharisees have not gone away.
The Pharisees favored easy divorces and Jesus did not.
quote:Not quite so fast. I know perfectly well that most Catholics don't think that way. But it is such great fun to bait those on the Ship or elsewhere of the William George Ward, Hilaire Belloc, Ludwig Ott tendency.
Originally posted by CL:
quote:Utter nonsense and nothing more than the usual ignorant and stupid Protestant caricature of Catholicism.
Originally posted by Enoch:
IngoB and others, I've said this before on other threads, and in various different ways. I'm going to say it again.
I can't see how one can be a Catholic and argue that the Pope has got something wrong.
If the Pope says the Catholic Church has got to change its line on something, then a good Catholic, and particularly a traditionalist one, must accept that. The thought that either oneself, or a group of people one associates with, might know better than the Pope is being a Protestant in Catholic clothing.
So long as the Pope has not decided, Catholics can and should debate these things. You all, even the unmarried mother in a Brazilian barrio, have a part to play in helping him discern. It's particularly inspiring that he has asked you to do so. But if he does decide, that's like having a Bull delivered with your morning papers. If the Pope decides the teaching on remarriage (say) must stay the same, it stays the same. If he decides it will change, it changes. Those Catholics who are traditionalists and would rather he had decided differently, must obey and change with him.
I don't agree with that approach to theology. But I'm not a Catholic.
quote:You seem to be saying that, descriptively, everyone necessarily makes a judgment as to whether any particular utterance of the Pope represents the mind of the Church. Or not.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:The problem with all these discussions is that unless I give some totally clear-cut rules that one can follow automatically without any thought, you will claim that I'm making arbitrary distinctions. But neither is there such a set of rules nor are the distinctions arbitrary. Nobody who has bothered looking at the historical Church and her teachings could come to the conclusion that sexual morals in general, and contraception in particular, is not a valid field for potential papal teachings. That's just dumb, and rhetorics aside, you of course know that it is. There is long history of concern with such questions in the Church. What is required here is hence informed and faithful judgement. And there is no cookie-cutter rule for what that means. In the end however any judgement we make will be private. That is unavoidable.
Originally posted by Russ:
for example, were a Catholic to conclude that choice of method of contraception is not a moral issue and not an issue that forms part of the faith that comes to us from the apostles, then it would be perfectly licit to ignore papal teaching on this issue.
quote:Something doesn't ring true to me about that, I must say. Why were they nervous about it? Who were they? The Vatican - and Francis personally and his immediate predecessors - has had generally excellent relations with the Jewish people for decades. That nervousness makes no sense to me.
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Afterwards, someone nervously informed the Pope that she was Jewish. He smiled and replied, "So was Mary". (From Private Eye)
quote:Actually, no. The pope is supposed to be the servant of the servants of God.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
In theory, at least, the pope is only the servant of tradition.
quote:An Israeli news website has it differently:
Originally posted by Robert Armin:
(Tangent, only justified if at all by the fact this thread has been quiet.)
Another reason to cheer the Pope. It seems something went wrong with the arrangements for the midnight Mass at St Peter's this year, and a soprano had to be flown in at the last minute from London. Afterwards, someone nervously informed the Pope that she was Jewish. He smiled and replied, "So was Mary". (From Private Eye)
quote:They don't mention it being an emergency arrangement, or her being nervous.
The Vatican discovered [Israeli soprano Chen] Reiss via Vienna's Philharmonic Symphony. She sang the same composition with the symphony at a festival for religious music two years ago. The pope himself was only told that the singer was Israeli 24 hours before the mass. "I approve very much, because Mary was also Jewish," he said.
quote:I find it rather hilarious how all your highfalutin' crap in the end so readily boils down to an argumentum ad hominem.
Originally posted by Russ:
I suspect there's a philosophical term for the sort of Frenchman who accepts any flawed or fallacious argument provided that it leads to a conclusion that France is right and France is great. And refuses to accept the validity of any principle by which France can be criticized.
Don't be that sort of Catholic. I know you want to aim higher than that...
quote:And thus he is the servant of the servants of that true tradition which is Divine in origin, guarded by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, and so terribly sticks in your craw.
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:Actually, no. The pope is supposed to be the servant of the servants of God.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
In theory, at least, the pope is only the servant of tradition.
quote:All of this misses the point. The potential problem is not simply that the singer is Jewish. That's ridiculous. Why would anyone have an issue with a Jewish singer as such? I doubt that there ever was a time where a pope would have rejected a singer simply because they were Jewish. The potential problem is that this Jewish singer was performing at the Vatican's Christmas mass and was specifically singing Mozart's "Et incarnatus est", which is the part of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed that asserts that Christ was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. Here is the performance in context, she is on at 3:14.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
An Israeli news website has it differently:
quote:They don't mention it being an emergency arrangement, or her being nervous.
The Vatican discovered [Israeli soprano Chen] Reiss via Vienna's Philharmonic Symphony. She sang the same composition with the symphony at a festival for religious music two years ago. The pope himself was only told that the singer was Israeli 24 hours before the mass. "I approve very much, because Mary was also Jewish," he said.
quote:I don't think any liturgical music is inherently unsuitable. It becomes so if the aim, in using the music, is to provide a brilliant performance of a technically difficult piece.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Another point that comes to mind, and bit of a tangent I'm afraid, is that the above example merely demonstrates the unsuitability of such music to the liturgy. I would argue that as soon as you need to search for highly trained muscisians it ceases to be liturgical and becomes a mere performance. That's beauty of chant, I suppose, because it can be used everywhere at all times, even if it's just the priest and deacon. That's not to say that such pieces of music aren't in anyway beautiful or that they don't lift the mind in a spiritual sense, only that they are unsuitable.
quote:No. Ad hominem is playing the man not the ball, responding to the fact that it is you that is saying it rather than to what you're saying. This is the opposite. This is saying that the crap you're currently spouting is the problem and inviting you not to identify yourself with it.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:I find it rather hilarious how all your highfalutin' crap in the end so readily boils down to an argumentum ad hominem.
Originally posted by Russ:
Don't be that sort of Catholic. I know you want to aim higher than that...
quote:I have no problem with Francophiles as such. But people who pretend that they're interested in truth and justice and goodness and are really only interested in trying to secure a pro-French conclusion are pretty despicable...
France is great. And if you have a problem with that, then I'm sure you can find a lake to jump into.
quote:I don't have a problem with tradition either. I like traditions. They tell us where we've come from. What I find hard to stomach is the sort of small-minded jobsworth who wants to impose their preferred tradition on everyone else, self-serving tradition, tradition for its own sake, tradition as the yardstick by which all things are assessed, tradition as the last word on where we're going.
quote:And thus he is the servant of the servants of that true tradition which is Divine in origin, guarded by the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, and so terribly sticks in your craw.
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:Actually, no. The pope is supposed to be the servant of the servants of God.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
In theory, at least, the pope is only the servant of tradition.
quote:If we were to strip away all the bias, falsehood and insult of your post, then indeed we could probably boil it down to a different conception of tradition. But I prefer to leave it as ugly as it is.
Originally posted by Russ:
Maybe the struggle is between those who know this and view tradition in that light, and those who don't?
quote:I'm sure the loud slurping noises from papal publicity stunts that suck up to the Zeitgeist will lead to millions of new converts to the RC faith. You just wait. And feel free to hold your breath while you do...
Originally posted by Golden Key:
"Pope opens doors to transsexual dubbed 'devil's daughter'." (Yahoo) By the way, it was the man's own priest who called him that.
quote:Since you accuse me of this, I'm sure you can somehow back it up? I mean, other than by simply asserting this?
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
You prefer the ostracism and denouncement as a "Devil's Daughter" to the pope's acceptance then? Lovely. Funny you should mention ugliness in the same post.
quote:See that question mark? It means it was a question. I don't put question marks on assertions. I ask for confirmation. It was what I inferred from your post, but I'm open to elucidation.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Since you accuse me of this, I'm sure you can somehow back it up? I mean, other than by simply asserting this?
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
You prefer the ostracism and denouncement as a "Devil's Daughter" to the pope's acceptance then? Lovely. Funny you should mention ugliness in the same post.
quote:Don't play games. It was a rhetorical question, as you well know.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
See that question mark? It means it was a question. I don't put question marks on assertions. I ask for confirmation. It was what I inferred from your post, but I'm open to elucidation.
quote:Nonsense. It's everything about rules. You can call them principles if you like. You can call them what you like, but whatever you call them, people come first.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
"Rules" as if to make it sound arbitrary. It's nothing to do with rules, as if this was akin to determining which days we should fast on.
quote:Yet what did our Lord say to the woman caught in adultery? Even though he showed her mercy did he condone her sin? No.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:Nonsense. It's everything about rules. You can call them principles if you like. You can call them what you like, but whatever you call them, people come first.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
"Rules" as if to make it sound arbitrary. It's nothing to do with rules, as if this was akin to determining which days we should fast on.
quote:Pope Francis did not treat him decently, in any simple sense. Rather he singled him out and arranged for an - inevitably public - demonstration of decency, if you so wish. It's a different kind of game that is being played there, a very public one, and I think Pope Francis should stop trading clarity on doctrine for the warm fuzzies from people who are at best neutral to the Church, if not decidedly inimical to her. Because that's effectively what he has been doing, in my opinion, whatever may have been his intentions.
Originally posted by Gwai:
I'm pretty sure Diego Neria Lejarraga would be more socially normal (and welcomed) in my circles than Pope Francis', but he still treated him decently.
quote:Nice picking and choosing there... Hint: what I was actually considering as potentially heretic (if accepted) was indicated by the application of scare quotes.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Heresy? If accepting that some people are made miserable by the dissonance between their phenotypical gender and what they feel themselves innately to be, and that we can do something about that misery is heresy then chalk me up as a heretic. And a proud one at that.
quote:And why precisely should any Catholic, or for that matter traditional Catholic, care that you don't get Catholicism? The pope is infallible only under very special circumstances, which furthermore need to be invoked by the pope explicitly and do not attach to his office automatically, much less to just every thing he does or says. Otherwise the pope is fallible, which means that he can get things wrong and make mistakes. It happens. I know no Catholic who is particularly threatened in their Catholicism by the fact that it happens (as much as they may rage against any real or perceived error of some pope or the other).
Originally posted by Enoch:
I still don't get how one who advocates a traditionalist understanding of Catholic teaching including on the papacy can argue that the Holy Father has got something wrong or made a mistake.
quote:I'm unfortunately unable to source online and in English translation quite a few medieval / early modern comments on this topic, so the above journal article will have to do. (In particular Pope Innocent III quite explicitly stated that the pope can become heretic, but his Sermons do not appear to be around in full translation, and I won't link to snippets that float around among Sedevacantists.)
"New Commentary on the Code of Canon Law", J.P. Beal, J.A. Coriden, T.J. Green
Canon 1404 - The First See is judged by no one.
Canon 1404 is not a statement about the personal impeccability or inerrancy of the Holy Father. Should, indeed, the pope fall into heresy, it is understood that he would lose his office. To fall from Peter's faith is to fall from his chair. [footnote 36: various references to canon law sources] The question, however, of who or what body (probably a general council) would determine whether, in fact, the pope had fallen into heresy is unclear historically and is obviously not settled by this canon.
"De Romano Pontifice", St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church
Therefore, the true opinion is the fifth, according to which the Pope who is manifestly a heretic ceases by himself to be Pope and head, in the same way as he ceases to be a Christian and a member of the body of the Church; and for this reason he can be judged and punished by the Church. This is the opinion of all the ancient Fathers, who teach that manifest heretics immediately lose all jurisdiction, and outstandingly that of St. Cyprian (lib. 4, epist. 2) who speaks as follows of Novatian, who was Pope [antipope] in the schism which occurred during the pontificate of St. Cornelius: "He would not be able to retain the episcopate, and, if he was made bishop before, he separated himself from the body of those who were, like him, bishops, and from the unity of the Church."
Summa Theologiae, St Thomas Aquinas, Doctor of the Church
A subject is not competent to administer to his prelate the correction which is an act of justice through the coercive nature of punishment: but the fraternal correction which is an act of charity is within the competency of everyone in respect of any person towards whom he is bound by charity, provided there be something in that person which requires correction. ... It must be observed, however, that if the faith were endangered, a subject ought to rebuke his prelate even publicly. Hence Paul, who was Peter's subject, rebuked him in public, on account of the imminent danger of scandal concerning faith, and, as the gloss of Augustine says on Galatians 2:11, "Peter gave an example to superiors, that if at any time they should happen to stray from the straight path, they should not disdain to be reproved by their subjects." ... To presume oneself to be simply better than one's prelate, would seem to savor of presumptuous pride; but there is no presumption in thinking oneself better in some respect, because, in this life, no man is without some fault.
Apostolic Constitution "Cum Ex Apostolic Officio", Pope Paul IV
... if ever at any time it shall appear that any Bishop, ... even the Roman Pontiff, prior to his promotion or his elevation as Cardinal or Roman Pontiff, has deviated from the Catholic Faith or fallen into some heresy:
(i) the promotion or elevation, even if it shall have been uncontested and by the unanimous assent of all the Cardinals, shall be null, void and worthless; ...
(v) each and all of their words, deeds, actions and enactments, howsoever made, and anything whatsoever to which these may give rise, shall be without force and shall grant no stability whatsoever nor any right to anyone;
(vi) those thus promoted or elevated shall be deprived automatically, and without need for any further declaration, of all dignity, position, honour, title, authority, office and power.
"The Church in Medieval Thought", Fausto Salvoni, Restoration Quarterly Vol. 2 No. 4 (1958): 205-19
Can the Pope become Heretic? In the Decree of Gratian we find this expression attributed by the Cardinal Deus Dedit (d. 1087) and Yves de Chartres to Boniface Archbishop of Mayence: "No one can judge the sins of the pope, who alone judges man, but can be judged by no one, except for the sin of heresy." (62) Innocent III asserted "the faith is very necessary for me, because I have only God as the judge of all by sins, but for the one sin against the faith I can be judged by the church."(63)
The medieval theologians did not study this possibility of heretical popes.(64) But all the canonists of the XII and XIII centuries accepted and agreed with the decree of Gratian. They acknowledged the possibility for the pope to become heretical. They questioned only how he can be judged by the church. Some canonists extended the authority of the church to judge the pope also to other sins.(65) But generally this authority was restricted to heresy.(66) According to Rufinus the heresy must be pertinacious,(67) that is, continuing after one or two admonitions. In that position the pope is inferior to every other Catholic Christian (minor quolibet catholico) said Huguccio.(68)
Though Cardinal Torquemada wrote that papal infallibility is caused by special assistance of the Holy Spirit, he really minimized its value. The pope indeed cannot only err as a private person, but he can also err in defining the creed. But his error, due to the liberty of the pope's will, cannot be adduced to prove the fallibility of the pope. He cannot therefore be deposed by the council because he is already displaced by himself for his heresy.(69)
quote:I'm not so sure that this particular issue is done and dusted in RC teaching. But yes, one is clearly not culpable of any sin simply for having gender identity disorder, and no, the changed gender would (best I know) not be recognised where this could be relevant to the Church (concerning marriage or ordination).
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
That's a good question. As far as I can tell, the RCC considers gender dysphoria to be a mental illness, which suggests there is no culpability attached to it. Again, as far as I can tell the Church does not recognize gender reassignment.
quote:For one thing, I think you are saying the Church should be neutral or inimical to Diego really and not vis versa. Because Diego is clearly not neutral to the Catholic Church despite what his priest apparently said. If he were, he wouldn't want to meet with its leader.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Pope Francis did not treat him decently, in any simple sense. Rather he singled him out and arranged for an - inevitably public - demonstration of decency, if you so wish. It's a different kind of game that is being played there, a very public one, and I think Pope Francis should stop trading clarity on doctrine for the warm fuzzies from people who are at best neutral to the Church, if not decidedly inimical to her. Because that's effectively what he has been doing, in my opinion, whatever may have been his intentions.
Originally posted by Gwai:
I'm pretty sure Diego Neria Lejarraga would be more socially normal (and welcomed) in my circles than Pope Francis', but he still treated him decently.
quote:I wasn't talking about Diego at all with that comment, because I don't think these actions are primarily about Diego or indeed even transgendered people in general. I was talking about people like you or your husband, or indeed the majority of the mass media. I think these actions are aimed at the majority of people in the West who have a different opinion about transgendered people (and homosexuality) than the Church has. Admittedly, that's cynical. And I don't necessarily mean that Pope Francis is calculating his actions for effect. He may well be genuinely moved and rather impulsive, but if so, then I think he has mastered the art of channeling that into a specific public persona. As I guess is to be expected of a Jesuit...
Originally posted by Gwai:
I think you are saying the Church should be neutral or inimical to Diego really and not vis versa.
quote:That's an unrealistic appraisal of possible motivations that Diego might have. Not that I have any idea about those. For all I know he considers himself totally devout and Catholic to the core. But it would certainly also be possible for Diego to outright hate the church, and aim for her destruction, and still want to meet Pope Francis.
Originally posted by Gwai:
Because Diego is clearly not neutral to the Catholic Church despite what his priest apparently said. If he were, he wouldn't want to meet with its leader.
quote:Fair enough. I think we are largely in agreement there anyway, we just evaluate the outcome differently. As I've said, we will simply see how much good Pope Francis is doing with all this.
Originally posted by Gwai:
Re decency and ways to interpret it, I think I addressed that in the part of my comment you snipped out.
quote:In other words, the Pope should stop giving the appearance of being a decent man, because people might get the wrong idea about the Catholic church...
Originally posted by IngoB:
he singled him out and arranged for an - inevitably public - demonstration of decency, if you so wish. It's a different kind of game that is being played there, a very public one, and I think Pope Francis should stop trading clarity on doctrine for the warm fuzzies
quote:And why, if this soul is as evil as you say, should the Pope be afraid of Diego? Is he going to brainwash the poor Pope? Give the mistaken idea that it's possible to uphold church doctrine and show people basic courtesy and respect due to the image of God in them? Warm fuzzies, my ass. This is simply being human before humans, just as Jesus did.
Originally Posted by IngoB:
But it would certainly also be possible for Diego to outright hate the church, and aim for her destruction, and still want to meet Pope Francis.
quote:And so on, and so forth... Yes, the warm fuzzies - as on display here, with you, and Martin60, and plenty of other people either neutral or inimical to the Church. And the uselessness of it all is also on full display, because none of you people now feels compelled to join RCIA, isn't that so?
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
And why, if this soul is as evil as you say, should the Pope be afraid of Diego? Is he going to brainwash the poor Pope? Give the mistaken idea that it's possible to uphold church doctrine and show people basic courtesy and respect due to the image of God in them? Warm fuzzies, my ass. This is simply being human before humans, just as Jesus did.
quote:IngoB, we don't like personal attacks even when they are attacking "most of us" as perceived by you. Desist.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Enjoy, since that's all this will ever change in you.
quote:Because aren't you supposed to want and pray that I should be persuaded of the errors of my ways and join you?
Originally posted by IngoB:
And why precisely should any Catholic, or for that matter traditional Catholic, care that you don't get Catholicism?
quote:That's fine. However, there's still a big difference between saying 'we only have to believe what the Pope says when he says specifically that he's propounding doctrine infallibly' and adopting a carping approach to everything one's spiritual leader says or does because he doesn't represent the sort of Catholicism one likes.
The pope is infallible only under very special circumstances, which furthermore need to be invoked by the pope explicitly and do not attach to his office automatically, much less to just every thing he does or says. Otherwise the pope is fallible, which means that he can get things wrong and make mistakes.
quote:To repeat what I said above, how someone with gender identity disorder is to be treated is not - I think (!) - a fully settled issue within RC moral and pastoral practice. I think there is some scope there for seeing bodily surgery as the best available treatment option for this particular mental illness, if it acutely endangers the well-being of that person. This would however not entail accepting the changed gender as real where this affects church law (ordination and matrimony).
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
What I don't understand, if these teachings are "right", is why God wants people with gender dysphoria to be miserable, rather than change their gender. Seems rather a mean rule.
quote:I'm sorry, but I'm missing in all this the part where you show that this attitude and this discernment is missing in those who are uncomfortable with what Pope Francis is doing? Furthermore, I think you do not appreciate enough that being pope is an office. One can indeed apply discernment to the role of the office, it is not necessary to judge every single action of the papacy anew strictly on its own merits. And in practice, that is one reason why critique of what Pope Francis is doing is often so immediate. It is not "knee-jerk" (or at least it doesn't have to be), but a consistent comparison with a considered view of the role of this particular office. In fact, much of the praise for Pope Francis from others is generated near instantly in just the same way, but from a different view of the office.
Originally posted by Enoch:
Presumably, as a Catholic, one believes that the Pope is the person God has chosen to lead the Catholic Church. Isn't one therefore supposed to listen to what he says and look at what he does with discernment. Perhaps, yes, he might turn out to be mistaken. Even so, if he isn't doing something I'd do if I were Pope, isn't the first question I should ask of myself, 'might this have something to say to me?', rather than 'if I got the chance, I'd have something to say to him'.
quote:It's not difficult.
Originally posted by IngoB:
But yes, according to most of you - I know - Diego is not sinning at all. So this is just the pope behaving a bit more like any decent person would, and acting as a good pastor should. So, warm fuzzies for you then. Enjoy, since that's all this will ever change in you.
quote:I had a two paragraph response typed out before I realised that this would necessary stray into DH territory. Suffice to say then that you are absolutely correct, but for two things: 1. You overly limit what counts as "sin". 2. You include "tall" and "gay" in one list as if there are no differences between those two. But there are.
Originally posted by Boogie:
It's not difficult. Sinning is chosen behaviour chosen to hurt others. Our race, gender, eye colour and height (to name a few) are not chosen by us at all they are 'given' - by God if you believe that, or by chance if you don't. Either way, we can't sin by simply being black, tall, gay, male, female etc.
quote:I'm a bit surprised that, after all the discussion upthread, you didn't consider "male" or "female" as orientational sins, since the possibility for confusion and "improper" assignation exists. Is it sinful to maintain a lie if one perceives that one is the "wrong" physical gender and stays the way one is physically, or is one supposed to make changes to bring one disjointed pieces together, therefore approaching a less inimical state?
You include "tall" and "gay" in one list as if there are no differences between those two. But there are.
quote:(I don't know whether gender change is also DH? I'm not intending to overstep boundaries here.)
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
I'm a bit surprised that, after all the discussion upthread, you didn't consider "male" or "female" as orientational sins, since the possibility for confusion and "improper" assignation exists. Is it sinful to maintain a lie if one perceives that one is the "wrong" physical gender and stays the way one is physically, or is one supposed to make changes to bring one disjointed pieces together, therefore approaching a less inimical state?
quote:At some point, yes, obviously. Every bitching about your situation, whatever that situation may be, can turn into an open conflict with God. At what point is, however, a different question. Clearly there is some scope to complain about one's lot, as the psalms show. And it seems just and right to me that those whose crosses are heavier shall have more freedom to moan about it.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Plus I know some tall people who are really upset about that feature. Are they sinning by telling God that they disapprove of His choices?
quote:Discussions of being gay are DH, I understand, so let's not get into that here.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
And "gay": is it sinful to attempt to hide gayness, thereby damaging oneself and the people around one, especially one's married partner, or is it sinful to admit to one's nature, thereby earning disapproval from the Pharisees* while improving one's own mental state? *See comments from Jesus on this matter
quote:Seems to me that you're right that the only thing we're culpable - morally responsible - for is our choices. We're only responsible for what we are insofar as our choices have made us what we are. (My sister-in-law, for example, is a stubborn individual who reportedly stunted her growth by turning vegetarian as a teenager - some of her lack of height is a consequence of her choice).
Originally posted by Boogie:
Sinning is chosen behaviour chosen to hurt others. Our race, gender, eye colour and height (to name a few) are not chosen by us at all they are 'given' - by God if you believe that, or by chance if you don't.
Either way, we can't sin by simply being black, tall, gay, male, female etc.
quote:It's only prejudice if you form your opinion of someone without giving them a fair shake.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:And so on, and so forth... Yes, the warm fuzzies - as on display here, with you, and Martin60, and plenty of other people either neutral or inimical to the Church. And the uselessness of it all is also on full display, because none of you people now feels compelled to join RCIA, isn't that so?
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
And why, if this soul is as evil as you say, should the Pope be afraid of Diego? Is he going to brainwash the poor Pope? Give the mistaken idea that it's possible to uphold church doctrine and show people basic courtesy and respect due to the image of God in them? Warm fuzzies, my ass. This is simply being human before humans, just as Jesus did.
Of course, I cannot predict the effect on less prejudiced people. I don't know whether now many Catholics that were drifting away from the Church feel encouraged to stay. I cannot predict whether those more friendly to the Church indeed see this as a motivation to now finally join RCIA. But here's the thing: I don't need to. I can just wait. Let's give it five years or so, then we will see the impact Pope Francis has had on the numbers.
Meanwhile, none of you particularly cares about the pope sending mixed messages - if not outright causing scandal to the faithful - concerning key Catholic teachings on gender, intimate relationships, and marriage. Because you think these teachings are wrong, so who cares? Well, I do. And so do others who think these teachings are right. Jesus did not simply meet and greet with sinners. That is the false accusation of the Pharisees against him! Jesus brought sinners to repentance, he was working as doctor among the sick, healing or at least attempting to heal them. Where is the "go, and sin no more" in all this? If the pope is putting on a public show of WWJD, then where's the "what would a repentant sinner do" bit? Where is Diego crying on the pope's feet and wiping it with his/her hair?
But yes, according to most of you - I know - Diego is not sinning at all. So this is just the pope behaving a bit more like any decent person would, and acting as a good pastor should. So, warm fuzzies for you then. Enjoy, since that's all this will ever change in you.
quote:Why are you so fearful that a trannie could threaten God's kingdom by meeting with the Pope? You spoke of him as if he were some kind of dastardly villain, steepling his fingers and fancying the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Old Testament, contact with the Holy obliterated sinners with extreme prejudice. In the Gospels, contact with the Holy heals sinners. Have we gotten so far out that contact with sinners can destroy the holy? Is faith really such frail stuff that one confused soul can destroy an entire institution? If so, where is God in this?
quote:I'm confused.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:And so on, and so forth... Yes, the warm fuzzies - as on display here, with you, and Martin60, and plenty of other people either neutral or inimical to the Church. And the uselessness of it all is also on full display, because none of you people now feels compelled to join RCIA, isn't that so?
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
And why, if this soul is as evil as you say, should the Pope be afraid of Diego? Is he going to brainwash the poor Pope? Give the mistaken idea that it's possible to uphold church doctrine and show people basic courtesy and respect due to the image of God in them? Warm fuzzies, my ass. This is simply being human before humans, just as Jesus did.
quote:I don't think the whole "gates of hell" thing means that we are to sit on our thumbs waiting for God to clear away any obstacles Satan is throwing our way. I think for the most part it will be us acting as instruments of God who are to ensure that the Gates of Hell indeed do not prevail. To use this verse as a kind of "laissez faire" principle is in my eyes entirely mistaken. I'm nor entirely sure what you are quoting or paraphrasing with the evil that shall pass away, but I'm sure that if you were to give me chapter and verse, then I would not find a simple counsel of passivity there either.
Originally posted by Bullfrog.:
Why are you so fearful that a trannie could threaten God's kingdom by meeting with the Pope? You spoke of him as if he were some kind of dastardly villain, steepling his fingers and fancying the destruction of the Roman Catholic Church. The Gates of Hell shall not prevail. Satan shall be cast down. Do not be concerned with the evil of this age, for it will pass away. Why is this one individual such a threat? How is that even conceivable?
quote:This simply ignores the actual situation, as actually expressed by several people on this thread. What Pope Francis is doing here is not seen as some special Christian (or Catholic) kindness. It is pretty much seen as the pope (and possibly with him the Church) catching up to basic standards of decent behaviour. It's more a "well, at least he did say sorry and came through in the end" moment in the eyes of the world. But the pope cannot actually come through in the end. So this invariably will disappoint and appear as hollow.
Originally posted by St Deird:
I'm confused. The claim, earlier in the thread, was that the Pope was demonstrating to the public that we should behave lovingly towards people even if we disagree with them. And now you, IngoB, are calling it "useless" because no-one's feeling compelled to become Catholic as a result? Surely, even assuming that the RCC is the one true church that we should all join, in a situation where we AREN'T joining it,
a) influencing people outside the RCC to behave more lovingly
is still better than
b) not caring whether people outside the RCC behave lovingly or not
After all, if nothing else, option (a) could cause people to gradually move closer to Christ, could it not?
quote:That for some people it is difficult to determine their gender, and that for some it may even be a matter of human choice imposing one onto an unformed body, is neither here nor there. Just like I can discuss sight in spite of shortsightedness or even blindness, locomotion in spite of quadriplegia and muscular atrophy, etc. Dysfunction does not mean that I cannot discuss function. It simply means that what I discuss concerning function does not apply as straightforwardly to those who have dysfunction, and possibly in them only denotes a lack one has to contend with. And quite generally, hard cases do not make good law. It is foolish to start one's consideration of gender with those few difficult cases where gender is hard, or even impossible, to determine objectively. Whereas once one has figured out how one wants to deal with gender in principle, one can come back to these hard cases. Then one can motivate all sorts of exceptions and adaptations in such cases, because one has established principles as guidance.
Originally posted by orfeo:
IngoB, whenever the topic of transgender people comes up it always feels to me as if you don't accept that gender can be anything other than a binary state, based on the presence or absence of a Y chromosome.
This is demonstrably not true, because androgen insensitivity syndrome has conclusively shown that it's possible for a person to end up with a female body while possessing a Y chromosome. Gender is affected by several different things, just as height is affected by several different things.
quote:The 'sin' appears to be not living in the body that God gave you.
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
Some straw men here. No-one is saying "it's counter-cultural, therefore it's good", nor is anyone saying "I want X therefore X is good". It's more trying to find any way whatsoever in which this particular X, gender reassignment, can possibly be called not good, since it resolves a problem and harms no-one.
The definition of sin I struggle with is an action that does no-one any harm whatsoever but is decreed as "sin" anyway.
quote:As partly outlined in the post immediately below yours, this is begging the question. It's highly problematic to describe 'gender' as stopping at an external examination that checks whether various lumps appear to be in the place you, an external observer, expects.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In the case at hand, I do not believe that there is any difficulty in determining Diego's biological gender?
quote:The notion of biological gender is confused in any case. It's sex identity that is biological, (male and female), and there are blurred areas here; but the notion of gender formerly used to denote masculinity and femininity, which are more psychological and sociological areas. Unfortunately, the meaning of 'gender' has started to leak into 'sex', so that quite often you don't really know what someone means by the term.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:As partly outlined in the post immediately below yours, this is begging the question. It's highly problematic to describe 'gender' as stopping at an external examination that checks whether various lumps appear to be in the place you, an external observer, expects.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In the case at hand, I do not believe that there is any difficulty in determining Diego's biological gender?
Is the brain not a biological organ? Is its functioning not a biological process?
quote:Nobody is ignoring the brain here, but you are simply ignoring my point. In regular function, the gender of your genes, of your "lumps" and of your mind are one and the same. It is already a dysfunction if they somehow deviate from each other. I simply do not have to deal with gender identity disorder, people with various chromosomal abnormalities and whatnot to make statements about gender. Period. Once I have said something about gender in its regular function, I have to deal with the special cases presented by various dysfunctions. But then I only need to do so precisely in terms of these dysfunctions. I do not have to somehow generalise dysfunction to have the same status as function, and consider it on an equal footing. Dysfunction remains secondary to function, as some kind of privation thereof. And that's exactly how it should be dealt with.
Originally posted by orfeo:
As partly outlined in the post immediately below yours, this is begging the question. It's highly problematic to describe 'gender' as stopping at an external examination that checks whether various lumps appear to be in the place you, an external observer, expects. Is the brain not a biological organ? Is its functioning not a biological process?
quote:Yes.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Nobody is ignoring the brain here, but you are simply ignoring my point. In regular function, the gender of your genes, of your "lumps" and of your mind are one and the same. It is already a dysfunction if they somehow deviate from each other. I simply do not have to deal with gender identity disorder, people with various chromosomal abnormalities and whatnot to make statements about gender. Period. Once I have said something about gender in its regular function, I have to deal with the special cases presented by various dysfunctions. But then I only need to do so precisely in terms of these dysfunctions. I do not have to somehow generalise dysfunction to have the same status as function, and consider it on an equal footing. Dysfunction remains secondary to function, as some kind of privation thereof. And that's exactly how it should be dealt with.
Originally posted by orfeo:
As partly outlined in the post immediately below yours, this is begging the question. It's highly problematic to describe 'gender' as stopping at an external examination that checks whether various lumps appear to be in the place you, an external observer, expects. Is the brain not a biological organ? Is its functioning not a biological process?
(And before anybody jumps to conclusions: the above says in no way or form that people with gender dysfunction are secondary human beings. That is not the point at all.)
quote:This is the third time on this thread then where I say that I - personally - am not sure about the sinfulness of gender reassignment therapy. Not because I disagree with the RCC, but simply because I have not put in the necessary work to have an informed and coherent opinion. I actually do not even know what the official RC teaching is there, at least not at the nitty-gritty level. And I also repeat once more that I think a key concern has to be just how strongly, and in what way, gender/sex is part of our identity.
Originally posted by orfeo:
But then you are saying it is a sin to resolve the dysfunction. Why is it a sin to resolve gender dysphoria, but not a sin to heal blindness or an inability to walk?
quote:I don't get it. If you don't have a concluded position on gender reassignment, what exactly is there that is wrong about Diego such that there is a problem with Diego meeting the Pope?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:This is the third time on this thread then where I say that I - personally - am not sure about the sinfulness of gender reassignment therapy. Not because I disagree with the RCC, but simply because I have not put in the necessary work to have an informed and coherent opinion. I actually do not even know what the official RC teaching is there, at least not at the nitty-gritty level. And I also repeat once more that I think a key concern has to be just how strongly, and in what way, gender/sex is part of our identity.
Originally posted by orfeo:
But then you are saying it is a sin to resolve the dysfunction. Why is it a sin to resolve gender dysphoria, but not a sin to heal blindness or an inability to walk?
This does not change my concerns with Diego and the pope, and from the start I have indicated that I am focusing on his presumably intimate relationship with a woman there.
quote:I think Ingo's position AIUI is that even if you allow Diego to have gender reassignment, he's still "really" a woman so can't marry one. And even if he is a sort of man, he can't get one up the duff so it's still verboten.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:I don't get it. If you don't have a concluded position on gender reassignment, what exactly is there that is wrong about Diego such that there is a problem with Diego meeting the Pope?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:This is the third time on this thread then where I say that I - personally - am not sure about the sinfulness of gender reassignment therapy. Not because I disagree with the RCC, but simply because I have not put in the necessary work to have an informed and coherent opinion. I actually do not even know what the official RC teaching is there, at least not at the nitty-gritty level. And I also repeat once more that I think a key concern has to be just how strongly, and in what way, gender/sex is part of our identity.
Originally posted by orfeo:
But then you are saying it is a sin to resolve the dysfunction. Why is it a sin to resolve gender dysphoria, but not a sin to heal blindness or an inability to walk?
This does not change my concerns with Diego and the pope, and from the start I have indicated that I am focusing on his presumably intimate relationship with a woman there.
quote:Yes, the NHS tends to treat it as a medical condition, but definitely not as a mental illness. This now smacks of the same judgmental view which listed homosexuality in the DSM.
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
There are beaurocratic considerations which would justify calling sex and gender dysphoria a recognised medical condition. Though classing it as a mental illness seems very extreme.
In most places, someone (eg: a national health service, medical insurance) will only pay for a medical treatment if that treatment addresses a recognised medical condition and is expected to improve the quality of life of the patient. Which is why the beaurocrats need to be able to tick the box next to a list of recognised medical conditions.
quote:Yeah, but it's not like Diego is trying to have sexy times with the Pope. Unless you count a hug as foreplay...
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
quote:I think Ingo's position AIUI is that even if you allow Diego to have gender reassignment, he's still "really" a woman so can't marry one. And even if he is a sort of man, he can't get one up the duff so it's still verboten.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I don't get it. If you don't have a concluded position on gender reassignment, what exactly is there that is wrong about Diego such that there is a problem with Diego meeting the Pope?
quote:I am at a loss to understand what you mean by all of this. It looks fairly insulting both to the pope specifically and to a broad sweep of humanity in general.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
It has the potential to cause much scandal among the faithful fof start. A bishop should not be the cause of scandal. But then Francis is a pope in the image of JPII. Both talking much meaningless gobbledegook (JPII philosophical mumbo jumbo and Francis "warm fuzzies") and the cause of much scandal among the RC faithful. I'm laying money on on Francis to be the first person to be canonised whilst still alive, btw. I can see it already, because most people are thick.
quote:Apart from the typos it's quite easy. Both have been a cause of scandal. Both have been surrounded by a personality cult, partly of their own doing, which in the case of Francis will probably see him fast tracked to sainthood even faster than JPII, no doubt whilst he's still alive. Both are with little substance. That's what the papacy has become, it seems, except that brief period in between when the bishop of Rome (much under appreciated) seemed almost orthodox.
Originally posted by Teufelchen:
quote:I am at a loss to understand what you mean by all of this. It looks fairly insulting both to the pope specifically and to a broad sweep of humanity in general.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
It has the potential to cause much scandal among the faithful fof start. A bishop should not be the cause of scandal. But then Francis is a pope in the image of JPII. Both talking much meaningless gobbledegook (JPII philosophical mumbo jumbo and Francis "warm fuzzies") and the cause of much scandal among the RC faithful. I'm laying money on on Francis to be the first person to be canonised whilst still alive, btw. I can see it already, because most people are thick.
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quote:If you keep repeating things, people will eventually assume that you mean them.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
You do recognise sarcasm, don't you?
quote:First thing to say, I am not aware of any official statement on this. All the rest you will be getting is my speculation based on my understanding. Take it FWIW.
Originally posted by Golden Key:
Those of you who think Diego's outward female gender was what God had in mind, and that Diego is still female: What do you think of Hayley's situation? Is she female or male? She identifies as female. Was she wrong to try to fix her body, to the extent that she could? (Putting aside, if you can, the question of whether IVF is right or wrong.) And how does this compare with Diego's situation?
quote:Inhuman, that.
Originally posted by IngoB:
The Church deals in realities, not in human declarations. If we say that there is no way of determine the reality of someone's gender, then we are saying that they cannot qualify in any way for those things that make demands on gender.
quote:The fact that you think men and women can be reduced to looking at a single location in the body is just mind-boggling.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In Hayley's case apparently she presents as "woman", i.e., she has a vagina.
quote:I completely disagree, in that any classification that fails to reflect the actual world is not useful.
Originally posted by IngoB:
Classification is not about capturing the complexity of the world, but about reducing it to a useful level.
quote:But that's not what's going on here. Newtonian gravity is a perfectly useful theory that you can use to answer the majority of questions (at least ones that relate to gravitational forces...). In most cases, you'll get the right answer. If your question is about the orbit of Mercury, or about the frequency of the clocks in GPS satellites, you'll be slightly wrong, and if your question is about rotating black holes, you're lost in space.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I completely disagree, in that any classification that fails to reflect the actual world is not useful.
quote:But that's precisely it: we're not noticing. It's not simply the case that we have a system that categorises people into male and female which works for 99% of people but the system allows an adjustment when necessary, we have systems that positively insist that people comply and be neatly male or female, even when they're actually not.
Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
quote:But that's not what's going on here. Newtonian gravity is a perfectly useful theory that you can use to answer the majority of questions (at least ones that relate to gravitational forces...). In most cases, you'll get the right answer. If your question is about the orbit of Mercury, or about the frequency of the clocks in GPS satellites, you'll be slightly wrong, and if your question is about rotating black holes, you're lost in space.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I completely disagree, in that any classification that fails to reflect the actual world is not useful.
For most people, two binary biological sexes is a perfectly reasonable model (total incidence of intersex people is about 2 or 3 in 1000). Transgender or non-binary gender presentation people could be about an order of magnitude more common (possibly about a percent or so, although these estimates aren't easy).
There's nothing wrong with the traditional theory, as long as you have a way of noticing that you're trying to calculate Mercury's orbital dynamics and doing something else in that case.
quote:Exactly right. And, in this instance, the system is the Catholic Church.
Originally posted by orfeo:
At no point in the judgement is there any hint that if the answer is no, the law cannot properly handle such a person, then everything's hunky dory and the intersex person should just adjust to the system. The clear policy of the judgement is that for an equitable outcome, the system needs to adjust to the person.
quote:No, being transgender isn't a choice.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Having a sex change operation isn't a choice? Nonsense.
quote:The traditional Catholic philosophy recognises a soul as well as a body. So one might have thought that the idea of a male soul in a female body (or vice versa) would be at least conceivable.
Originally posted by IngoB:
The Church deals in realities, not in human declarations.
quote:A classification needs only to reflect those aspects of the world relevant to its purposes. At a fair, you might see a sign with a line on it saying "only people with a height of 140 cm or above may take this ride". This splits all of humanity in people too short to take the ride, or not, and that's perfectly fine. Now you might come with a special case, an adult who has but stumps for legs. He does not reach the height standing on the ground, but this seems not quite right. So we look at what the purpose of the rule really is. We find it actually is about whether you fit into the security system holding you at the hips and shoulders during the ride. The simple line is just a proxy that works almost always because people have certain proportions. So we can go back to the person having no legs and say "looking deeper into what this rule is about, you are actually large enough for the ride". This however does not mean that we now have to change the sign and measure all the thousands upon thousands of visitors in much detail. It means that the person guarding the entrance has to be aware of special cases.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I completely disagree, in that any classification that fails to reflect the actual world is not useful.
quote:But I have proposed precisely such an adjustment. I have concluded that Hayley - for the purposes of the sacrament of marriage - counts as a woman, even though this could be considered doubtful. I have done so in a reasoned manner, by evaluating the purpose of the sacrament. What I have not done it to say "well, your case falls between the cracks, bye now". It remains true that Hayley is not a woman like most women, e.g., she has unusual genes for a woman. And nobody is denying her any sort of emotional or intellectual stance towards that. However, if she wishes to partake in the sacrament of marriage, then she will have to do so as a woman. And it would be dishonest if she sought sacramental marriage, but didn't mentally agree with being a woman at least for the purposes of the sacrament. In the case of Hayley, however, that appears to be not a problem at all.
Originally posted by orfeo:
It's not simply the case that we have a system that categorises people into male and female which works for 99% of people but the system allows an adjustment when necessary, we have systems that positively insist that people comply and be neatly male or female, even when they're actually not.
quote:We may assume in favour of this Australian High Court judge, and mentally add here "for the purposes of Australian secular law, concerning which I have been given authority". If we cannot add this mentally, then he is clear overstepping the boundaries of his remit and there's no guarantee whatsoever from his position in the judiciary that his statement has any validity or force.
Originally posted by orfeo:
The very first sentence of the judgement is: "Not all human beings can be classified by sex as either male or female." The rest of the judgement is about whether the particular law can handle a person that is neither male nor female.
quote:Jesus the anarchist is nowhere to be found in the bible. Against the background of Jewish law at the time, as personified by the Pharisees, he can be seen to bind more tightly in some case and to loosen in others. And where he provides a discussion, it is exactly along the lines of "what is the deeper purpose here". It is from such analysis that for example he loosens the rules of the Sabbath to allow charitable action and tightens the rules of marriage to re-establish the union of one flesh.
Originally posted by Boogie:
It was what Jesus spoke against, time after time. That people matter and if they are different then the religious institutions should find ways to change and cope. Remember - we are not talking about how people behave here, we are talking about who they are and the way they were made.
quote:Traditional Catholic philosophy is not Cartesian dualist, but hylomorphic dualist. It recognises the soul as the form of the body. Gender is an essential accident (not in itself the essence of a person, but something a person has by virtue of that essence, which is to be a rational animal). Each and all problems with gender would be a mal-form-ation, some privation in the forming of the embodiment. This includes psychological problems with gender, which form part of this embodiment.
Originally posted by Russ:
The traditional Catholic philosophy recognises a soul as well as a body. So one might have thought that the idea of a male soul in a female body (or vice versa) would be at least conceivable.
quote:There are two different questions here: 1) Is the "change of gender" morally licit itself, and 2) is it effective concerning conditions on gender the Church imposes? I think the answer to 1 is "possibly, it will depend on the case", and the answer to 2 is "no, not with current medical technology, but maybe some time in the future". So a judgement concerning 1 indeed requires looking at every individual case, but a judgement concerning 2 does not at this point in time. It may be that Diego committed no sin in undergoing gender reassignment therapy, but currently this therapy is not in fact capable to turn him into a man for the purposes of marriage. Hence the latter require no discussion with Diego (unless he wants to make a case that the Church is not aware of a radically new treatment that he has undergone).
Originally posted by Russ:
So why can the Catholic church not listen critically to Diego and to anyone else with similar issues, and make a judgment in each individual case (bearing in mind the >10:1 preference for not burdening the innocent) as to their assumed gender for administrative purposes ?
quote:It's an interesting comparison, as I suppose historically homosexuality was pathologized by, variously, the law, psychiatry, medicine and theology; in short, declared to be unnatural, or just mad and/or bad.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:No, being transgender isn't a choice.
Originally posted by Ad Orientem:
Having a sex change operation isn't a choice? Nonsense.
And just like with homosexuality, the church's solution to people being transgender has often been to tell them to 'repent' and stop being transgender. Telling them to go ahead and be normal. Just... *hand waving* switch off your brain somehow.
quote:But the one thing you won't countenance is the possibility that the sacrament, with its simple binary classification, was developed at a time when it simply wasn't understood that there was anything else.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:A classification needs only to reflect those aspects of the world relevant to its purposes. At a fair, you might see a sign with a line on it saying "only people with a height of 140 cm or above may take this ride". This splits all of humanity in people too short to take the ride, or not, and that's perfectly fine. Now you might come with a special case, an adult who has but stumps for legs. He does not reach the height standing on the ground, but this seems not quite right. So we look at what the purpose of the rule really is. We find it actually is about whether you fit into the security system holding you at the hips and shoulders during the ride. The simple line is just a proxy that works almost always because people have certain proportions. So we can go back to the person having no legs and say "looking deeper into what this rule is about, you are actually large enough for the ride". This however does not mean that we now have to change the sign and measure all the thousands upon thousands of visitors in much detail. It means that the person guarding the entrance has to be aware of special cases.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I completely disagree, in that any classification that fails to reflect the actual world is not useful.
This is what I have done above. I've asked why the sacrament of marriage uses the simple "man" and "woman" classification in the first place, which works in the vast majority of cases, and asked how he can extend this to a special case, guarding that purpose. To say "but the world is more complicated" is really quite meaningless. The complexity of the world is exactly what I have dealt with, but I only need to deal with it in regards to the purposes of the sacrament.
quote:All airlines have restrictions on what size and type of items you can bring into the cabin. If you look on their websites, you'll see a variety of ways of describing these ideal carry-on items - the dimensions, the sum of the dimensions, whatever. When you get to the airport, however, there's no measuring tape. There's just a metal sizer that your bag has to fit into. If it fits, you can carry it on. If it doesn't, you can't.
Originally posted by IngoB:
A classification needs only to reflect those aspects of the world relevant to its purposes. At a fair, you might see a sign with a line on it saying "only people with a height of 140 cm or above may take this ride". This splits all of humanity in people too short to take the ride, or not, and that's perfectly fine. Now you might come with a special case, an adult who has but stumps for legs. He does not reach the height standing on the ground, but this seems not quite right. So we look at what the purpose of the rule really is. We find it actually is about whether you fit into the security system holding you at the hips and shoulders during the ride. The simple line is just a proxy that works almost always because people have certain proportions. So we can go back to the person having no legs and say "looking deeper into what this rule is about, you are actually large enough for the ride". This however does not mean that we now have to change the sign and measure all the thousands upon thousands of visitors in much detail. It means that the person guarding the entrance has to be aware of special cases. ...
quote:The Catholic sacrament of marriage - unlike the secular, romantic notions of marriage - actually has a very clean and precise purpose. It is basically a process of granting exclusive license for the kind of intercourse (vaginal, with ejaculation) that can lead to procreation. More can be said, of course, a lot more. But at the core, it is just that. Likewise, in my analogy the height rule at its core has the concern of having security devices grab a firm hold of the passenger. The only reason why one would have to revise such clear rules is if there was some fundamental change at the core. So if the ride had completely different security devices installed, then one would likely have to revise the height rule, or even abandon it. Likewise, if the way in which people naturally make babies with each other would have fundamentally changed, say by a global mutation of mankind, then one might have to rethink the sacrament of marriage. But this is simply not the case. Nothing whatsoever has changed concerning the core concern of the sacrament of marriage, indeed, as far as the "mechanics" go that core predates humanity. It is hence perfectly appropriate to simply analyse special cases in terms of the unchanged core concern, which is just what I have done.
Originally posted by orfeo:
But the one thing you won't countenance is the possibility that the sacrament, with its simple binary classification, was developed at a time when it simply wasn't understood that there was anything else. My entire point was that fixing the classification has to be one of the options.
quote:Exactly!
Originally posted by orfeo:
Perhaps, though, it's simply inevitable so long as you see marriage's prime purpose as procreation rather than relationship that it's very easy to declare that yes, absolutely, we need one person in the "Male" box and one person in the "Female" box and raising the possibility of a system that has a third box just doesn't compute.
quote:Even when those special cases, through no fault or choice, can never meet the criteria required?
Originally posted by IngoB:
Nothing whatsoever has changed concerning the core concern of the sacrament of marriage, indeed, as far as the "mechanics" go that core predates humanity. It is hence perfectly appropriate to simply analyse special cases in terms of the unchanged core concern, which is just what I have done.
quote:First, apart from their role in the Australian judiciary, these High Court judges are just random people to me. Based on their role, I can guess that they are highly educated and intelligent in a way that facilitates a career in the judiciary. But that's it. They certainly do not wield any authority I would recognise, given that I'm currently not under Australian law. Second, I have in fact done above exactly this glorious thing that you are so proud of in your Australian judges. The very first thing I stated was actually not what one should look at in doubtful cases. The very first thing I have stated was what should be done in cases where gender is truly indeterminate. By which I mean both senses of determining things: neither being able to recognise gender, nor being able to impose it. And the simple answer is that someone who truly has no gender is not qualified for sacraments that make demands on gender. Obviously. Now, I think the number of people who are truly indeterminate in our times is either zero, or very close to it, other than by choice. Because we do have hormonal treatment, surgery and the like which can push indeterminate gender one way or the other. But I do not have the knowledge to exclude that there are still cases where gender can neither be recognised nor imposed. And it is of course possible that someone with indeterminate (in the sense of unrecognisable) gender chooses to not have gender imposed on themselves (or, more likely in practice, that their parents choose not to impose gender on them). And so I stated at least as a matter of principle what follows then.
Originally posted by orfeo:
And no, there is absolutely no warrant to limit their statement that "not all people are either male or female" by saying "for the purpose of Australian law". The very point of the case was that Australian law might not reflect the reality that not everybody is either male or female.
quote:Medieval reasoning happens to be a term of praise to me. Anyway, you are quite right, it tells us nothing about the depths of love and devotion possible in marriage. But neither does it deny these or rule them out. Thus your rendering of the rule is simply unfair, since it really says no such thing. It simply says that if you want to take the ride, you have to be at least of that height. Whether you want, can, should or will fall in love while taking that ride is not a matter this rule itself is concerned with.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
The sign posted by the RCC says that only baby-making-sex is allowed, and that is why it has to impose all this medieval reasoning and Procrustean rules about who can have sex with whom. None of it tells us anything about the depths of love and devotion that two humans can bestow upon each other. It's the equivalent of a sign saying, "You must be at least 150 cm tall to fall in love."
quote:If people truly are incapable of doing something, then it is neither graceful nor charitable to let them perform a charade to pretend to themselves or others that they can. And if the Church is kept from doing so because it is run by celibate men, then that would be a very good reason indeed why one should insist that the Church be run by celibate men.
Originally posted by Boogie:
Even when those special cases, through no fault or choice, can never meet the criteria required? I am sure the Church has much more grace and charity to people who are different in other ways than sexually. Could this be because it's run by celibate men?
quote:It flies in the face of all rational concepts of God that he should create something capable of being enjoyed in dozens of different ways, and then tell us to forget about the dozens and concentrate just on the one -- especially when the one can lead to all sorts of misery (read: unwanted children or [shudder] abortion).
Originally posted by IngoB:
If all that love and devotion culminates in you wanting to have sex with someone, then the Church says that there is exactly and precisely one way that is pleasing to God.
quote:I have a distinct feeling that people outside the RC church may not be aware of this attitude. There is another post by Bill Lindsay today dealing with his own experience of Jesuit education.
Ignatius advised to obediently follow the Church, even if it meant believing "that the white I see is black, if the church hierarchy says so" — or words to that effect (it's at the end of the Spiritual Exercises).
quote:No, no, no, silly one! That is the sin in the world and lure of the eEeVil one.
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
quote:It flies in the face of all rational concepts of God that he should create something capable of being enjoyed in dozens of different ways, and then tell us to forget about the dozens and concentrate just on the one -- especially when the one can lead to all sorts of misery (read: unwanted children or [shudder] abortion).
Originally posted by IngoB:
If all that love and devotion culminates in you wanting to have sex with someone, then the Church says that there is exactly and precisely one way that is pleasing to God.
quote:The fall has had horrible consequences, I agree. And the call to undo its consequence concerning sex while still in this world can impose a heavy cross, I agree. Yet there we are.
Originally posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe:
It flies in the face of all rational concepts of God that he should create something capable of being enjoyed in dozens of different ways, and then tell us to forget about the dozens and concentrate just on the one -- especially when the one can lead to all sorts of misery (read: unwanted children or [shudder] abortion).
quote:Born of fear, I imagine.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
quote: The second thing that strikes me is the ferocity of the anger — I'll go further and use the word "hate" — some Catholics display at hearing such reports.
Pretty good meat for the discussion, wherever it leads!
quote:According to the rules, then, people with certain disabilities who get married are also playacting. If the nature of marriage is part of a titanic struggle in the RCC, it may not be acceptance of same-sex or trans relationships that turn the tide; it might just be Catholics rejecting the insulting theology and 'sucks to be you' pastoral care that are the current official response to those with imperfect bodies.
Originally posted by IngoB:
... If people truly are incapable of doing something, then it is neither graceful nor charitable to let them perform a charade to pretend to themselves or others that they can. ...
quote:I feel no fear.
Originally posted by IngoB:
That's a rather toothless ad hominem. Lots of people are angry with the conservative / traditional Catholic position on this thread, and I guess that they could be considered fearful of something or the other. But rather obviously they would claim that their anger and/or fear is fully justified. As would the people whom you call angry / fearful here - so what?
quote:Insinuation 101: never say anything too concrete, always let the others jump to the worst conclusions. That is maximally effective, gives least purchase for a defence, and provides you with plausible deniability in case you get called on your rhetorics.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
According to the rules, then, people with certain disabilities who get married are also playacting. If the nature of marriage is part of a titanic struggle in the RCC, it may not be acceptance of same-sex or trans relationships that turn the tide; it might just be Catholics rejecting the insulting theology and 'sucks to be you' pastoral care that are the current official response to those with imperfect bodies.
quote:Spoken in an Austrian accent, I suppose? You are the Boogieator B-800 Model 101...
Originally posted by Boogie:
I feel no fear. What is there for me to be afraid of? Nothing.
quote:Bulverism is alive and well.
Originally posted by Boogie:
Those angry people are fearful of change, fearful for their positions and fearful of a 'slippery slope' into something 'less' than they have now. I imagine.
quote:Haha!
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Spoken in an Austrian accent, I suppose? You are the Boogieator B-800 Model 101...
Originally posted by Boogie:
I feel no fear. What is there for me to be afraid of? Nothing.
quote:Yes, fair dos.
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:Bulverism is alive and well.
Originally posted by Boogie:
Those angry people are fearful of change, fearful for their positions and fearful of a 'slippery slope' into something 'less' than they have now. I imagine.
quote:Well, even before birth control (although I suppose humans have been trying to do that for a long time), it seems odd to me to say that the 'purpose' of sex is babies. As I said, have I had sex about 3000 times, in order to reproduce? (Modest estimate).
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
ISTM that the next-previous ABC said that, once we have accepted the concept of birth control, then we have said that sex is not necessarily about procreation. Seems that a very high percentage of RCs have accepted that argument, whatever the Magisterium may pronounce.
quote:I don't think that estimate is anything to be modest about. In fact, a round of applause is in order...
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
As I said, have I had sex about 3000 times, in order to reproduce? (Modest estimate).
quote:Let me hasten to add, as Hamlet might say, it was all for Queen and country.
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
quote:I don't think that estimate is anything to be modest about. In fact, a round of applause is in order...
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
As I said, have I had sex about 3000 times, in order to reproduce? (Modest estimate).
quote:It's not the purpose as in "what I wanted when I did it". It's also not the purpose as in "what it achieves most of the time". It's purpose as in the reason why it exists, its end, its final cause. Without the need for animals to procreate there simply would be no sex. Sex is "designed" towards that end, whether by the "designer" you mean God, evolution or both. Our sex organs are "designed" for reproduction. That's simple biology. Our desire for sex is not somehow independent of this aim, but precisely a consequence of this aim. Sex is pleasurable so that we have it so that we reproduce. This statement is not at all refuted by the undeniable fact that lots of people, and indeed animals, attempt to gain the pleasure of sex without the bother of having kids. The claim is not that it is impossible to game the reward system of sex, neither that such gaming is rare, but simply that the reward system exists in the first place in order to encourage reproductive behaviour.
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
Well, even before birth control (although I suppose humans have been trying to do that for a long time), it seems odd to me to say that the 'purpose' of sex is babies. As I said, have I had sex about 3000 times, in order to reproduce? (Modest estimate).
quote:I suspect that you imagine correctly, that conservatism is always about fear.
Originally posted by Boogie:
Those angry people are fearful of change, fearful for their positions and fearful of a 'slippery slope' into something 'less' than they have now.
I imagine.
quote:Do you think that the Pope could fundamentally change his Church's teaching on sexual ethics for these people and remain recognisably Catholic?
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
If the nature of marriage is part of a titanic struggle in the RCC, it may not be acceptance of same-sex or trans relationships that turn the tide; it might just be Catholics rejecting the insulting theology and 'sucks to be you' pastoral care that are the current official response to those with imperfect bodies.
quote:Can you define hate speech? The way some people in the US are using that term is making me nervous.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
And why should people throw hate-filled commentary into a discussion about disadvantaged minorities?
Is there no place for allowing for some people to merely exist, even if they can't join your club?
Hate speech has no place in religious discussion. We all know how badly that has turned out for many identifiable groups. It is the reason that the separation of church from state was seen as necessary, even by the religionists.
quote:But it is. You and your church intend it as an exhaustive descrtipion of all permissible sexual acts. If it's not an act that's open to procreation/ordered to procreation, it's simply not allowed.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In summary, the statement that the purpose of sex is reproduction is not intended as an exhaustive description of all sexual acts.
quote:God managed this for dogs. They do 'humping' but it's not sex (no ejaculation) They are only interested when a bitch is in season - and even then it has to be at the optimal fertile few days or the male doesn't bother.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I've pointed out before that logically this should mean sex is only allowed during a window of 2-3 days at the relevant part of a women's cycle when there's an egg in position to be fertilised
quote:There is, inevitably, a science fiction short story based on the premise that 'fixing' this is a Good Thing™, and how drastically society (written in the time when gay folk didn't exist...) alters because of it.
Originally posted by Boogie:
If God could do this for dogs and plenty of other creatures, he could have done it for us humans.
quote:FWIW, my own take: "hate speech" in this context involves attacking the people who are LGBTQ (black or other "race", female, "native"...) and their supporters for being just what they are: consigning them to Hell, blaming them for the "breakdown of society/morals", imputing all sorts of immoral activity and belief (that are provably not so), generally degrading them as unfit to be part of anything God-oriented (or even human), rather than arguing a case based on some form of actual experience.
Can you define hate speech? The way some people in the US are using that term is making me nervous.
quote:Who does this? How common is it? Outside of fringe weirdos like the Westboro people, who talks this way? I run in some pretty theologically conservative circles, and everyone I know is horrified and disgusted by their rhetoric and behavior.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Telling a person that, no matter what that person does, God will hate him forever
quote:I am no conservative but surely conservatism, though it may be about fear, is also against change that has not been thought through and against losing important aspects.
Originally posted by Russ:
quote:I suspect that you imagine correctly, that conservatism is always about fear.
Originally posted by Boogie:
Those angry people are fearful of change, fearful for their positions and fearful of a 'slippery slope' into something 'less' than they have now.
I imagine.
Best wishes,
Russ
quote:This seems clear and reasonable.
Originally posted by IngoB:
There are two different questions here: 1) Is the "change of gender" morally licit itself, and 2) is it effective concerning conditions on gender the Church imposes? I think the answer to 1 is "possibly, it will depend on the case", and the answer to 2 is "no, not with current medical technology, but maybe some time in the future". So a judgement concerning 1 indeed requires looking at every individual case, but a judgement concerning 2 does not at this point in time. It may be that Diego committed no sin in undergoing gender reassignment therapy, but currently this therapy is not in fact capable to turn him into a man for the purposes of marriage.
Hence the latter require no discussion with Diego (unless he wants to make a case that the Church is not aware of a radically new treatment that he has undergone).
quote:Balancing fear of loss with hope of gain is rational. A mindset that weights the scales on the side of fear of loss is conservatism.
Originally posted by leo:
surely conservatism, though it may be about fear, is also against change that has not been thought through and against losing important aspects.
quote:I could go on at some length, because this topic has been of interest to me since my daughters were quite young.
(Ironically, I’ve heard dozens of sermons about keeping my legs and my cleavage out of sight, but not one about ensuring my jewelry was not acquired through unjust or exploitative trade practices—which would be much more in keeping with biblical teachings on modesty.)
quote:The contention wasn't that such people don't exist, rather that they are not representative of the vast majority who hold to traditional sexual ethics. But if you're feeling uncharitable then I'm sure I can find extremes on the other end of the spectrum and claim they represent the liberal side.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Ad Orientem: I would suggest you try the same reading, or I can suggest more for you. It would be nice to have an actual comment rather than mere dismissive one-liners, so please read up a bit.
quote:HB, none of the blog posts you refer to have anything like this in them. Again, who is talking like this? Your rhetoric is reaching Chicken Little proportions here.
Originally posted by Horseman Bree:
Telling a person that, no matter what that person does, God will hate him forever
quote:I take it you mean that Catholic teaching can change on this as it (presumably) did on usury.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
@ Eliab:
One word: usury.
quote:Google Translate is notoriously inaccurate when it comes to Latin. Matrimonium omnibus would be better -- which the ultra-right will interpret as throwing marriage under the bus.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
They will release a statement with an impressive Latin name -- oh, say Nam quisque matrimonium, which Google says means marriage for everyone.
![[Killing me]](graemlins/killingme.gif)
quote:And that will be the final proof that the bishop of Rome has abandoned the apostolic faith. And of course it will deserve to die, the RC that is, as it inevitably will under such circumstances.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
Well, it looks like Pope Francis thinks the answer to a, b and c is adapt or die. Someday, there'll be council or conclave or whatever, and after much wailing and gnashing, they will release an statement with an impressive Latin name -- oh, say Nam quisque matrimonium, which Google says means marriage for everyone. It will be something along the lines of marriage, like the Sabbath, was made for all humans, and the rules about male and female were made when we didn't understand as much about sex, gender and orientation, and we don't have to follow everything in Leviticus anyway, and marriage can be creative and fruitful in other ways besides children, and marriage benefits both individuals and society, and shouldn't be denied to anyone, yadda yadda yadda. Four legs good, two legs better.
quote:This does not follow. First, that it is possible that Diego did not commit a sin (by my lights), doesn't mean that he actually didn't (even by my lights). Second, that I see a chance of double effect allowing this doesn't mean that every Catholic under the sun will think likewise. Many will never have heard of "double effect", and how it can mean that an evil (!) is licitly done. They are likely to see the pope's action as demonstrating that gender reassignment is simply OK, or that it is OK to sin, and thus either get things wrong or be shocked and confused by the pope apparently getting things wrong. Once more, this is a public act, and should be treated as such. If the pope does this, it needs to be framed, accompanied by proper explanation. The pope certainly can teach something relatively complicated to Catholics, like double effect. But not just by doing something and hoping that everybody will jump to the right conclusions.
Originally posted by Russ:
On question 1), if a "sex change" operation is not necessarily sinful, then Diego has not thereby committed an obvious public sin; it causes no scandal. So the pope can meet him, without saying "go and sin no more" about his gender swap (or whatever you want to call it).
quote:No, that's not the issue. The issue is that two women - and Diego is for the purposes of the sacrament a woman - cannot marry. Even if Diego was considered a man, then he could still not marry due to being antecedently and permanently impotent. But he is not considered a man for the purposes of the sacrament.
Originally posted by Russ:
On question 2) I see that there is a real issue about whether Diego can marry. And the issue is that the traditional position of the Church is that a marriage which has not been consummated can be annulled.
quote:That's false. My point was exactly that current medical technology does not have the capacity to change a woman into a man.
Originally posted by Russ:
Nothing to do with gender change - for this purpose Diego is just a man without a penis, unable to consummate the marriage.
quote:No, there simply is no "marriage" here. And a non-consummated marriage is a binding commitment. Just one that potentially can be dissolved by human power.
Originally posted by Russ:
So the marriage wouldn't be a binding commitment.
quote:That's not the point of this rule. The point of this rule is that it is the "union of one flesh" that brings the marriage "contract" before God, at which point it is taken out of human hands. Before that, grave reason can allow the breaking of a human "contract" by proper authority (the pope, currently), no matter how sacred one might consider it to be. It is certainly not the case that the inability of a man to father children, or the inability of a woman to conceive them, provides reason as such to break a marriage. Infertility is neither a hindrance to marriage, nor grounds to dissolve it. And if we are talking about male impotence here, then this rule does not need to be invoked at all. Antecedent and permanent impotence means that marriage cannot be contracted in the first place, and such an apparent marriage would be simply annulled, rather than referred to the pope as a case where he might dissolve an unconsummated marriage bond by his authority.
Originally posted by Russ:
The consummation rule is a mercy. It's a protection for a woman who, having married the man she has chosen to father her children, finds that he can't. As you say, the purpose of the rule...
quote:Frankly, this is mildly hilarious. Whatever happened to "sex is not just genital intercourse"? That the RCC gives license to one particular kind of sex (and doesn't really want to know what else you may be doing in bed as long as it leads to that), doesn't mean at all that the RCC considers everything else as not being sex. In fact, the rules in place there are IMHO very wise. The basic deal is that if a couple lives together as brother and sister, or sister and sister, or brother and brother, then their loving relationship does not fall under the rules for intimate relations. This avoids the need to specify in detail just what one can do, and also removes problems of cultural dependence and indeed of individual idiosyncrasies. Whatever your culture and upbringing will have been like, there will be things that you don't want to see a brother and sister do with each other. The taboo against incest will cut in at some point for you. The Church is saying that if the loving relationship of two people goes beyond what you find acceptable between siblings, then it will be considered as intimate in a sexual sense.
Originally posted by Russ:
Where I think your position is wrong is the combination of the two questions - you count whatever Diego and his partner do together - sleep in the same bed, touch each other with affection and eroticism - as being close enough to sex to condemn them for "living in sin" but not close enough to sex for the Church to count them as married. Against whom is their sin?
quote:Of course the State can refuse you registration for good reason, and then if you nevertheless take that unregistered vehicle on the road, prosecute you for that. And if you are building a motorised pram, then I very much hope that the State is willing to do both...
Originally posted by Russ:
If I make a motorised pram, I suggest that the State cannot in natural justice both refuse to register it and prosecute me for driving an unregistered vehicle.
quote:You contradict yourself by introducing the qualifier "permissible". Obviously "all" and "permissible" are not identical (unless all is permissible). It is an important point, because a typical objection against the rules of the Church that there is sex, even clearly apart from human wilfulness, which does not follow these rules. As far as sex goes, the Church asks her faithful to go beyond what is common in the world and embody the abstract purpose of sex in practice. On this matter, the Church is decidedly idealistic, puristic, or what have you - and the Church thinks that she need to be, because Jesus Christ decidedly was.
Originally posted by orfeo:
quote:But it is. You and your church intend it as an exhaustive descrtipion of all permissible sexual acts. If it's not an act that's open to procreation/ordered to procreation, it's simply not allowed.
Originally posted by IngoB:
In summary, the statement that the purpose of sex is reproduction is not intended as an exhaustive description of all sexual acts.
quote:First, I do not believe that Catholic sexual morals, or indeed Catholic morals in general, are identical with the natural moral law. They are merely compatible with it. I see this rather like the relationship between Catholic theology and (natural) metaphysics. There is nothing in the former that explicitly contradicts the latter, or vice versa, but they are not identical in scope or content. It is furthermore clear that sexual morals in particular were given by the Lord Himself a rather idealistic shape. Even the apostles were shocked by demands being imposed there.
Originally posted by orfeo:
I've pointed out before that logically this should mean sex is only allowed during a window of 2-3 days at the relevant part of a women's cycle when there's an egg in position to be fertilised, but apparently there's this belief that God is too dumb to be aware of that particular aspect of human biology and can be fooled into thinking a sexual act is open to procreation when it occurs at completely the wrong time of the month. So basically your criterion is that the sexual act looks right.
quote:The Catholic teaching on usury has not changed. At all. Most people do not in fact know what usury really means. It does not for example mean "charging too high interest". Neither does it simply mean "charging any interest at all". Usury means charging interest on what we nowadays call a "full recourse loan", i.e., where the loan is secured ultimately by the person borrowing the money, rather than by a thing. And one side of the argument against usury is basically the argument against slavery: you cannot own (a part of) a person. The other side of the argument against usury is that it creates "imaginary value" that is not tied to some concrete reality, a point that at the tail end of various financial crises may not be quite so alien to us today. Zippy Catholic has a good FAQ on usury. Zippy Catholic also documents that the supposed change of RC policy concerning usury in the early 19thC simply did not happen, see here.
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:I take it you mean that Catholic teaching can change on this as it (presumably) did on usury.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
@ Eliab: One word: usury.
quote:Then you believe that it is up to the Church to be God's policeman? I tend to think that sin is a personal and spiritual responsibility and that rules made and/or imposed by other humans are a human issue. Binding the legal process into a spiritual admonition is one of the problems a lot of westerners have with sharia and the more extreme forms of Islam. I wouldn't like to see a return of the mediaeval system that severely punished people who failed to turn up to church at specified times or who ate the wrong kind of food on certain days.
Originally posted by IngoB:
<Sorry for the triple post, but I'm working through a backlog here and putting it all in one mega-post seemed unhelpful.>
quote:The Catholic teaching on usury has not changed. At all. Most people do not in fact know what usury really means. It does not for example mean "charging too high interest". Neither does it simply mean "charging any interest at all". Usury means charging interest on what we nowadays call a "full recourse loan", i.e., where the loan is secured ultimately by the person borrowing the money, rather than by a thing. And one side of the argument against usury is basically the argument against slavery: you cannot own (a part of) a person. The other side of the argument against usury is that it creates "imaginary value" that is not tied to some concrete reality, a point that at the tail end of various financial crises may not be quite so alien to us today. Zippy Catholic has a good FAQ on usury. Zippy Catholic also documents that the supposed change of RC policy concerning usury in the early 19thC simply did not happen, see here.
Originally posted by Eliab:
quote:I take it you mean that Catholic teaching can change on this as it (presumably) did on usury.
Originally posted by Soror Magna:
@ Eliab: One word: usury.
However, what is correct is that ecclesiastical penalties imposed for the sin of usury were dropped. And that in consequence, usury has been all but forgotten. So if there is one clear lesson to be drawn from the historical case of usury, then it is this: If the Church wants to maintain her teachings on sin in practice, the she has to have the guts to confront sinners with actual, consistent and significant consequences. Or her teachings will get dismissed and ignored as so much theoretical fluff.
quote:Well, that's Zippy Catholic's view of RC policy, but it's not clear that it's the RC's view of RC policy. Does it not have a good FAQ of its own?
Originally posted by IngoB:
The Catholic teaching on usury has not changed. At all.
[...]
Zippy Catholic has a good FAQ on usury. Zippy Catholic also documents that the supposed change of RC policy concerning usury in the early 19thC simply did not happen, see here.
quote:Not as far as I know. You can of course work your way through the official statements of the Church, as well as relevant theological sources, from Aquinas to the moral manuals. But I don't think that there's a convenient one stop FAQ otherwise that has better authority. The summaries that are out there, like the one by the Catholic Encyclopedia tend to be confused and confusing, whereas what Zippy Catholic says makes good sense to me. If you read what Aquinas says here concerning "handing over the ownership of a house, but reserving the use", for which one can be legitimately charged, then this pretty much establishes that non-recourse loans are not usury. Because that's basically (the non-recourse part of) a mortgage. Whereas what is declared as usury by analogy to wheat is to both lend money and ask for money (i.e., interest) for using it. By these examples, if I borrow money against (part of) some-thing, thus de facto transferring (part of) ownership (as will be realised if I cannot pay back), then I can be charged justly for retaining its usage while not having paid back the money. But if someone just lends me money, then interest charged has no grounding in the usage of some-thing, it is merely charge on account of having received the money and thus being able to use it. And that Aquinas thinks is unjust. But that just is what happens in a full recourse loan, where the lender of the money expects to be paid back more just for having given the money.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Well, that's Zippy Catholic's view of RC policy, but it's not clear that it's the RC's view of RC policy. Does it not have a good FAQ of its own?
quote:The "Vatican Bank", or rather the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR from the Italian) is supposed to transfer and invest assets of dioceses and religious orders around the world. The IOR is not allowed to take deposits or make loans, and is hence not really a "bank" in the regular sense. It is a specialised financial service provider. The IOR also has been a complete clusterfuck, so it wouldn't be too surprising if they had ignored their statues concerning this. But no, they are not supposed to lend money.
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
How do the Vatican banks make money? Do they lend in the 'normal' way?
quote:But RC silence is only really remarkable if you assume he's right that the whole financial structure is based on a mortal sin according to RC teaching. Is it really more likely that the RCC thinks all its members in the financial industry go to hell without saying boo, or that Zippy's got it wrong?
Originally posted by IngoB:
There is little doubt that much of the financial system is based on a mortal sin the RCC has been forgetting to mention for a couple of hundred years. The question is more whether any of it is not sinful, and why precisely. (Incidentally, the sin is in principle on the side of the lender, not the borrower. See one of the later articles in the Aquinas link I gave above.) Best I can tell, Zippy has been reading key sources, like Aquinas and Vix pervenit. He could of course still be reading them wrong, but it is pretty silly to blame him for making up his own mind based on (semi-)official sources, given that the Church is remarkably silent on the subject...
quote:This doesn't make sense to me.
Originally posted by IngoB:
if I borrow money against (part of) some-thing, thus de facto transferring (part of) ownership (as will be realised if I cannot pay back), then I can be charged justly for retaining its usage while not having paid back the money. But if someone just lends me money, then interest charged has no grounding in the usage of some-thing, it is merely charge on account of having received the money and thus being able to use it. And that Aquinas thinks is unjust. But that just is what happens in a full recourse loan, where the lender of the money expects to be paid back more just for having given the money.
quote:Sure. I want a car, but I don't have the money at the moment. You lend me the money with the car as collateral. Effectively this means that you buy the car, but I get to drive around in it. We see this by the fact that if I default, you can repossess the car without further ado and sell it to recover your money. Now, my payment plan on one hand means that I eventually pay that car price to you. But I also pay you more: interest. Is this just? Sure, after all I get to drive around in what is effectively your car, why should I not pay you for doing that? This is not really different from renting a car and paying for it, except that at the end of this, if I have paid the loan off, I get to keep the car.
Originally posted by Russ:
- it is OK (not morally wrong as such) for me to ask for some compensation in exchange for lending you something
quote:No, that's not OK. In that case, you are really coming after me, you just happen to do so via my possessions (things I own). You did not effectively buy these things for me, and then granted usage to me. Neither did I effectively sell them to you, but retained usage. This is not a kind of rental contract with the ultimate goal of a transferral of ownership. The only thing you have to do with these possessions of mine is that you have an "I owe you" in your hand, and you are targeting the stuff I own because that's an easy way of getting something back from me. It is through me being personally liable that you are grabbing these things now, it is not the case that these things were put up as collateral in the first place. It's a different situation. Whether this is just or not is a different discussion, but first we need to agree that something different is happening here.
Originally posted by Russ:
- it is OK for me to loan you something without collateral - without naming any specific things that you must forfeit if you don't pay it back - but instead claiming a right to confiscate unspecified goods of yours up to the value of the thing loaned if you cannot or will not return it
quote:It can be OK, sure.
Originally posted by Russ:
- it is OK for me to lend you money rather than things
quote:The middle element is not OK, hence also not the combination. The problem is that what I'm putting up as a collateral there is really myself. The security you get for your loan is not some thing, it is me. If I default the loan, you get rights over me. You can take away my things, even though I never intended selling them to you. You can force me to labour for you (if in the polite form of taking part of the wages I earn, rather than outright slavery). You can perhaps have me thrown into prison, if I fail to provide you with satisfactory repayment. I'm on the line, as a person, not a thing. In a non-recourse loan, you only have right over the agreed upon collateral, a thing, which you effectively rent out to me until I can assume full ownership by paying you off. If I default, then that collateral is all you can go for. Other than for that thing, I'm free to keep what I own and do what I want.
Originally posted by Russ:
But that by some strange alchemy, combining these three aspects - asking interest for money loaned without collateral - generates a new sin called usury which isn't present if any of the three elements is lacking ? Perhaps you can gently correct my misunderstanding ?
quote:OK, if not the whole financial structure, then at least credit card debt, student loans, and car loans, and at least a big enough part of the financial structure to be the source of the 2008 global financial crisis (I gather from your FAQ.)
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Right IngoB, my response was directed at Dave W's post, which appeared to combine both an exaggeration of your characterization as well as a "silence of the Holy See" argument (in effect that the fact that the Church hasn't issued any new documents on contemporary practices negates existing doctrine which was affirmed and reaffirmed for millennia).
quote:This seems like it would be an argument against any kind of interest-bearing loan, not just loans that are unsecured.
Originally posted by IngoB:
I borrow money from you obviously because I need to use it to do something for me. It is neither particularly charitable nor nice if you expect to get every penny back, but it sure is fair enough. Yet on what grounds would you charge me interest for that loan? Why do I have to pay you for using the money you lent me, if clearly the very point of me borrowing money from you is to use it?
quote:I don't know what Catholic Church you are talking about. My updated version of Denzinger covers significant doctrinal proclamations by the Holy See over the entire two thousand year history of the Church. It is approximately the size of a Stephen King hard cover novel, and - generously - at most 15% to 25% of those doctrinal declarations address moral theology at all (as opposed to sacramental theology and other doctrines of faith as distinct from morals).
Originally posted by Dave W.:
...during which time they haven't been shy about calling out lots of other mortal sins
quote:
The Catholic teaching on marriage has not changed. At all.
quote:I rather doubt that your options for understanding church teaching are limited to autodidacticism on the one hand and the equivalent of "asking to have lunch with the President" on the other.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Sure, you can try to get a Bishop to submit a dubium to the CDF -- making the attempt isn't actually forbidden. You can write a letter and ask to have lunch with the President too.
quote:
I found myself, a few years later, having a very similar conversation with Muhammad Yunus, who has since then received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts through the Grameen Bank to extend credit to the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh.
Yunus is a Muslim running a bank in a Muslim country. Islam forbids lending at interest. The Koran and Islamic religious law is not ambiguous on that point. When I asked Dr. Yunus if he personally had any religious qualms about lending at interest, his answer was nearly identical to what I'd heard years earlier from my Christian professor.
Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2010/05/29/sex-money-part-1/#ixzz3R4Kw3CFt
quote:Reading the actual authoritative documents from the Holy See on the subject is "autodidactism". Got it.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I rather doubt that your options for understanding church teaching are limited to autodidacticism on the one hand ...
quote:Well, in your case apparently yes:
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
quote:Reading the actual authoritative documents from the Holy See on the subject is "autodidactism". Got it.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
I rather doubt that your options for understanding church teaching are limited to autodidacticism on the one hand ...
quote:Doesn't that describe your effort? (It's not a slur.)
the process or practice of learning a subject without a teacher or formal education; self-education
quote:
... aren't you at least a little bit interested in asking an expert to see if you've read things right and find out what the official line on current teaching is?
quote:Have you mis-read Russ here, or have I mis-read you/Zippy Catholic?
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:No, that's not OK. In that case, you are really coming after me, you just happen to do so via my possessions (things I own). You did not effectively buy these things for me, and then granted usage to me. Neither did I effectively sell them to you, but retained usage. This is not a kind of rental contract with the ultimate goal of a transferral of ownership. The only thing you have to do with these possessions of mine is that you have an "I owe you" in your hand, and you are targeting the stuff I own because that's an easy way of getting something back from me. It is through me being personally liable that you are grabbing these things now, it is not the case that these things were put up as collateral in the first place. It's a different situation. Whether this is just or not is a different discussion, but first we need to agree that something different is happening here.
Originally posted by Russ:
- it is OK for me to loan you something without collateral - without naming any specific things that you must forfeit if you don't pay it back - but instead claiming a right to confiscate unspecified goods of yours up to the value of the thing loaned if you cannot or will not return it
quote:Only to the extent it describes every effort to understand moral theology in detail. (And please: "Can't we talk to someone who is more of an expert than you?")
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Doesn't that describe your effort? (It's not a slur.)
quote:Really? That's how you think theology is taught (well, "learned" I guess, "taught" would imply a teacher) in RC seminaries?
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
quote:Only to the extent it describes every effort to understand moral theology in detail.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Doesn't that describe your effort? (It's not a slur.)
quote:I admit that this imaginary Catholic Church in your mind, where seminaries are not only uniformly orthodox but can be counted on to understand finance as well, would save 'autodidacts' from a lot of the trouble of thinking for themselves.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
That's how you think theology is taught (well, "learned" I guess, "taught" would imply a teacher) in RC seminaries?
quote:So there's literally no one in the hierarchy you could ask whose opinion you might value? There's the CFD, you, the big stack of documents - and that's it? (Seems kind of lonely.)
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
quote:I admit that this imaginary Catholic Church in your mind, where seminaries are not only uniformly orthodox but can be counted on to understand finance as well, would save 'autodidacts' from a lot of the trouble of thinking for themselves.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
That's how you think theology is taught (well, "learned" I guess, "taught" would imply a teacher) in RC seminaries?
quote:Well, I'm sorry you didn't mention this before, since it is the very first thing I asked you about. I would have liked to know what their responses were (and I don't think that's unreasonable or insulting; after all, you presumably wanted to know that too.)
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
I've talked to certainly hundreds and possibly thousands of people on this subject in the years since I first took an interest in it -- folks from all sorts of different backgrounds, including clergy, professors of moral theology, and finance/business experts like myself.
quote:I think you're right in what you say here - the moral issue in all this is how far creditors should be allowed to go in recovering unpaid debts. If justice is a fair balance of the interests of the two parties involved, then a legal system that gives the creditor too many rights is unjust. He should not be able to take away the shirt on your back. Or the tools of your trade. Or anything else that prevents you from being a functioning employed member of society.
Originally posted by IngoB:
The problem is that what I'm putting up as a collateral there is really myself. The security you get for your loan is not some thing, it is me. If I default the loan, you get rights over me. You can take away my things, even though I never intended selling them to you. You can force me to labour for you (if in the polite form of taking part of the wages I earn, rather than outright slavery). You can perhaps have me thrown into prison, if I fail to provide you with satisfactory repayment. I'm on the line, as a person, not a thing.
quote:This argument doesn't make any sense to me at all. The point of a car is to be driven. Whether you drive a rented car or just park it in the driveway to impress the neighbours, whether you eat a borrowed bagel or exhibit it as modern art, whether you spend the loaned banknote or frame it on the wall, is entirely up to you. The interest or charge or rent you pay me for borrowing the thing from me is first and foremost compensation for the fact that I don't have those choices while the thing is on loan to you.
the other moral problem is that money is a medium exchange. While money has physical realisations (the bank notes in my wallet), the point of money is that you can buy and sell stuff with it. It is intended to be used, and even if one saves it up, then the point of that is precisely to store it up for future usage. In that sense money is like food or drink. The point of food or drink is that it will be consumed eventually. Even if you store up food or drink, it is with the intention of future usage.
Now imagine you give a bagel to someone but you say "You are hungry... here, you can have my bagel, but I want to get a bagel back." That's fair enough. It may not be charitable or nice, but it is just. You give a bagel, you get a bagel back (eventually). OK. Now the person wolfs down the bagel. Then you say "Ah, but you ate my bagel. Now I want one and a half bagels back. One bagel because I gave you one, and half a bagel extra because you ate it." That's obviously nuts.
quote:I can't follow this. Furthermore, what I can follow is both factually incorrect and over-precise logic-chopping. It reflects no credit on the moral theologians responsible, however celebrated.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Russ:
In order to understand usury you have to understand the difference between a mutuum loan and a contract for rent.
In a contract for rent, the borrower pays you for the use of the actual property (say a house), and returns that actual property at the end of the loan. If you stop making rent payments, he forecloses and claims his actual property -- but you, the borrower, are done at that point: he cannot continue to require payments from you after he has retrieved the actual property he loaned to you, or that was purchased (either from you as collateral or from a third party) with his money. Non recourse loans, licit census contracts, etc are variations on this kind of contract: there is always some actual property in which claims of the various parties terminate. As Vix Pervenit affirms, "from these types of contract honest gain may be made".
In a mutuum (the word "loan" in the English translation of Vix Pervenit is originally "mutuum"), the lender gives you something and you consume it - which is to say, once you are done using it, it is no longer in either your or his possession. Aquinas refers to this kind of situation as the loan of something 'consumed in its use'. This kind of loan is only morally licit as an act of charity or friendship, and cannot by its nature give rise to any titles to profit -- because any titles to profit would not be rooted in actual property, but rather in the person of the borrower, making this into a kind of partial enslavement of the borrower by the lender.
Of course this immediately gives rise to many other questions, which is why someone ought to post an FAQ covering all the different questions which tend to arise, citing Magisterial documents and Aquinas where appropriate, etc. ;-)
quote:Good point, sorry, I didn't read that qualifier Russ added carefully. I think you are correct there, to simply ask one's money back without interest certainly should be OK. That this seems uncomfortable is because one would not expect somebody to provide an interest free loan other than motivated by charity, and it doesn't seem very charitable to recover outstanding debt from the presumably poor by confiscating their remaining property. But I guess we can construct cases where even a charitable lender would recover a debt "mercilessly". And anyhow, we did not make charity an explicit condition, so we cannot count on the lender being that.
Originally posted by Eliab:
I thought the RC position (or at least, the RC position if it's being accurately portrayed by ZC) was that your can lawfully make a full-recourse/mutuum loan, but not make a profit from it. Getting your money back is OK - getting money and interest is not. If that's right then Russ's qualifier "up to the value of the thing loaned" is important and prevents the arrangement from being usury - the lender is only claiming the right to get back what he lent, not a profit. Or have I missed something?
quote:In my experience as a convert with considerable interest in doctrinal matters, the RCC doesn't teach its believers anything about usury, other than in the sense that 1. there is a backlog of official documents on the subject, and 2. the word is occasionally used without further explanation in newer official documents. Nobody of the RCC has ever tried to teach me anything about usury as such. Without some apologetic interest in the topic, I would have simply looked up usury in the dictionary (e.g., "the action or practice of lending money at unreasonably high rates of interest" - OED), and would have thought that that is all this was about.
Originally posted by Dave W.:
As for orthodoxy - when I ask about the teaching of the RCC, I'm not asking about an eternal metaphysical truth (not that there's anything wrong with that!), I'm asking about what the RCC, in the form of priests and theologians, actually teaches its believers. That's really not such a strange definition of "the teaching of the RCC".
quote:It does. I answered your question improperly, see my response to Eliab above.
Originally posted by Russ:
- this moral principle makes no distinction between the principal and the interest
quote:This seems to be the key question, really. To what extent is it justifiable to charge interest to compensate for the theoretical loss of gains elsewhere. Other Catholic commentators (see links above) disagree with zippy's conclusion that this is not justifiable (and consequently also interpret the actions of the Church differently).
Originally posted by Russ:
- if the law rightly gives the debtor a limit on their liability, then this creates a greater risk of default on loans in general. Interest is compensation for such risk as well as compensation for not having the use of the money (or thing loaned) for the period of the loan
quote:That's true to a degree. However, in the former case I get to decide what furniture I'm willing to lose if I default. In the latter case, the bailiff gets to choose.
Originally posted by Russ:
- if you live in a big house full of nice furniture, there may be in practice not all that much difference between a system that requires you to pledge your nice furniture as collateral in order to get a loan, and a system where a nominally-unsecured loan to you is underpinned by an unspoken threat to send the bailiffs round to confiscate your nice furniture...
quote:People do not borrow money for fun or to have it on display. They borrow it so they can spend it, usually because they need it urgently, sometimes perhaps because they want to spend it frivolously. At any rate, it may be possible to charge interest as "extrinsic title", in particular because you forego a profit elsewhere by supplying this money as a credit. But the analogy I made concerns the justification (or rather the lack thereof) of an "intrinsic title". Imagine you have plenty of money (you don't need all of it for yourself) but currently have no particular other investment opportunity. Can you then charge interest on a loan just because you lend that money? Is that just? That's the question I was trying to talk about.
Originally posted by Russ:
This argument doesn't make any sense to me at all. The point of a car is to be driven. Whether you drive a rented car or just park it in the driveway to impress the neighbours, whether you eat a borrowed bagel or exhibit it as modern art, whether you spend the loaned banknote or frame it on the wall, is entirely up to you. The interest or charge or rent you pay me for borrowing the thing from me is first and foremost compensation for the fact that I don't have those choices while the thing is on loan to you.
quote:Fair enough. I don't think I would have hesitated to ask such a question of the pastor of the church I grew up in, so it seemed to me a natural thing for a curious RC to do as well. (It seems zippy felt the same way; it would have been interesting to hear what kind of responses he got.)
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:As zippy correctly points out, there is no official RC "Q&A service". In fact, one could argue that this apologetic role is actually proper to the laity. What of course does exist is somebody asking their priest about matters that concern them personally. And that sort of request can get kicked up from priest to bishop to CDF if it's a tough question. But I am not a money lender. So if I were to ask my priest about usury, then I would be doing it for the sake of apologetics or writing posts on SoF. It would not really be to save my own soul, or those of my loved ones. So in a sense I would be wasting his time, if I insist on getting a "philosophically precise" answer that I do not need myself. I would be quite reluctant to ask in depth about this, unless I'm friendly with the priest and think that he would enjoy looking at this for its own sake. A money lender however could more reasonably ask his priest about this...
Originally posted by Dave W.:
As for orthodoxy - when I ask about the teaching of the RCC, I'm not asking about an eternal metaphysical truth (not that there's anything wrong with that!), I'm asking about what the RCC, in the form of priests and theologians, actually teaches its believers. That's really not such a strange definition of "the teaching of the RCC".
quote:As it happens, a some-time SoF poster today directed me to a source (J. Noonan's "The Scholastic Analysis of Usury") which apparently says pretty much the same thing. The book itself seems a little hard to find, so I was going to post a link to a summary of the main points ... but it turns out it's the same as your 2nd link.
However, I have in fact dug up two different (online) sources now, which seem to me to be reasonably well informed, and which contradict zippy concerning the extrinsic titles "loss occurring (damnum emergens) and profit ceasing (lucrum cessans)":
Fr G.L. Coulter (see in particular Chapter 3)
J. Burke (see in particular the revised version)
This is to be compared with Points 14-16 in Zippy's FAQ.
In summary, the story there goes like this: profit ceasing (lucrum cessans) was accepted as an extrinsic title that allowed charging of interest. The real change that happened in modern times is that the possibility of "profit elsewhere" became so ubiquitous, and the number of loans handed out so great (think of a banker), that the former practice of literally requiring a proof of "equal or greater lost opportunity" for every loan on which interest was charged was dropped. Basically, instead of assuming against the lender (in the confessional) unless the interest was proven justified, now it was assumed for the lender unless the interest was proven to be unjustified. And this de facto removed "normal lending" from the confessional altogether in short order.
quote:Accepted by whom?
Originally posted by IngoB:
In summary, the story there goes like this: profit ceasing (lucrum cessans) was accepted as an extrinsic title that allowed charging of interest. The real change that happened in modern times is that the possibility of "profit elsewhere" became so ubiquitous ...
quote:I've gotten every kind of response you could imagine, typically based on the politics of the person asked. I've noticed no difference between clergy and laymen. Dorothy Day types want to condemn all profits of every kind as immoral. Republicans in cassocks take the opposite tack and view usury as something that just doesn't apply in modern economies with modern money, unless just in illegal loan sharking. The great majority of people haven't given the subject a second thought, know next to nothing about it, and would probably just defer to sources like the Catholic Encyclopedia, Noonan, and the few online commentaries which reference Noonan (this describes me circa 2007 or so).
Originally posted by Dave W.:
Fair enough. I don't think I would have hesitated to ask such a question of the pastor of the church I grew up in, so it seemed to me a natural thing for a curious RC to do as well. (It seems zippy felt the same way; it would have been interesting to hear what kind of responses he got.)
quote:These are all addressed in my FAQ. In general, unsecured contracts for profit are not licit. Secured contracts for profit are licit, and if the borrower defaults you recover what you are owed from the security. Notice how this makes lawsuits disappear unless there is actual negligence or fraud: lawsuits arising from misfortune are off the table.
Originally posted by Enoch:
If I let out my house to you, and you don't pay the rent, I can evict you. That does not discharge you from liability for the rent you owe. I can still sue you for it.
If I lend money to you secured on your house, and you don't pay, I have two options. I can foreclose. That means I keep your property but it replaces the debt + interest and you are discharged from it. The courts do not usually let creditors do this.
Or, I can sell the property. If I sell it for more than your debt + interest, I pay myself off and must give the surplus back to you. If I sell it for less than the debt, I can still sue you for the balance. This is called negative equity.
If I lend you money, you do not 'consume' it. Money is what is called a fungible i.e. if I put my money in the bank, my deposit isn't some specific notes with numbers on them. It's the amount, in whatever form it happens to be. The same could apply to a bag of sugar, but not really to an antique chair or a pork pie.
quote:By the Church, according to those who disagree with you.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Accepted by whom?
quote:But aren't you arguing from silence here just as much as those opposed? They are saying: the magisterium has not spoken against it, therefore it is allowed. You are saying: the magisterium has not spoken for it, therefore it is forbidden. A law needs to be made public to be in effect. Thus the opposing side here has an advantage, all other things being equal. (You will say - I assume - that all other things are not equal. Fine. But I'm just saying that I find the line "but it has not been explicitly allowed" far from convincing as such.)
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
But the people telling it never produce an actual Magisterial proclamation permitting charging interest for lost opportunity (opportunity cost). At least they've never produced one that I have seen. That's the dog that doesn't bark.
quote:That however is not a direct statement about opportunity cost. It is a statement about the value of liquid assets as such. The point here can simply be that it is not sufficient to say that money that I have is better than money owed to me. If I have a mountains of spare money lying around, but do not see how I can invest it other than by lending it to you, then where is my "lost opportunity"? Of course, we are used to a world now where those with lots of money find an endless array of possible investments. But apparently this was not the case in the middle ages (and perhaps still in early modernity), where some "players" were sitting on considerably more coin than they knew what to do with. The magisterial statement could then simply mean that you have to argue an actual alternative investment opportunity to motivate the taking of interest. It is not sufficient to merely value liquid assets higher, because if those liquid assets can flow nowhere but remain stagnant, then they do not represent an opportunity. If all this is true, then modernity would have changed the picture by making the proof of alternative investments too trivial to remain an issue.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
"[The following proposition is condemned as erroneous:] Since ready cash is more valuable than that to be paid, and since there is no one who does not consider ready cash of greater worth than future cash, a creditor can demand something beyond the principal from the borrower, and for this reason be excused from usury. – Various Errors on Moral Subjects (II), Pope Innocent XI by decree of the Holy Office, March 4, 1679 (Denzinger)"
quote:Once more, it is far from clear that this speaks to opportunity cost. First, one really needs to continue this paragraph in the encyclical to its conclusion:
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
"We exhort you not to listen to those who say that today the issue of usury is present in name only, since gain is almost always obtained from money given to another. How false is this opinion and how far removed from the truth! We can easily understand this if we consider that the nature of one contract differs from the nature of another. – Vix Pervenit, Pope Benedict XIV, November 1, 1745"
quote:Thus what this paragraph is apparently about is the simple assertion "everybody is doing it (namely taking interest), therefore it is OK". And the answer of the pope is: 1. No, even if everybody is doing it, some of it is OK and some not. 2. This is obvious, since even secular courts condemn some interest taking. This paragraph simply does not state what is OK and what not. It merely points out that "all loans charge interest nowadays" is no moral guarantee that "all loans are decent nowadays".
By the same token, the things which result from these contracts will differ in accordance with the varying nature of the contracts. Truly an obvious difference exists between gain which arises from money legally, and therefore can be upheld in the courts of both civil and canon law, and gain which is illicitly obtained, and must therefore be returned according to the judgments of both courts. Thus, it is clearly invalid to suggest, on the grounds that some gain is usually received from money lent out, that the issue of usury is irrelevant in our times.
quote:Well, I don't think that you've really demonstrated your case so far. But here's the best counterargument from the opposing side, as far as I am concerned: as documented by Burke from Noonan here, see pages 8-10, the Holy See did not challenge practice in the confessional which according to your interpretation was letting usurers off the hook. Admittedly, there seems to be an "until further notice" attached here. Still, it's been almost 200 years with no further notice forthcoming. The first case is this:
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
What matters though is what can be supported by authoritative magisterial proclamations of doctrine; and the modernist story on usury gains no more support there than the modernist story on (e.g.) contraception.
quote:Now, what is supposed to be different if a woman did so in 2012 in Lyons? Must we not conclude that her charging interest as prescribed by civil law is also currently not considered a matter for the confessional by the Holy See?
In 1822, a woman of Lyons “gave her capital to certain persons with the agreement that they pay her the interest rate prescribed by civil law.” She appealed her confessor’s refusal of absolution and the sacraments.] The Holy Office, judging the appeal, declared that “a response will be given at a suitable time”; that meanwhile, however, restitution was not necessary; and that the woman might receive the sacraments.
quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
quote:By the Church, according to those who disagree with you.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Accepted by whom?
quote:I do cite where the Magisterium has spoken against it.
But aren't you arguing from silence here just as much as those opposed? They are saying: the magisterium has not spoken against it, therefore it is allowed. You are saying: the magisterium has not spoken for it, therefore it is forbidden.
quote:I agree that the pastoral changes to practice in the confessional are pretty much the best case that the progressives can make. I discuss that in Question 47 of my FAQ. But if we buy that pastoral instruction to confessors has doctrinal implications then Pope John Paul II reversed doctrine on contraception in 1997:
But here's the best counterargument from the opposing side, as far as I am concerned:
quote:That is far from the only citation, by the way. I also cite Regimini Universalis and Cum Onus on what kinds of contracts are licit for gain, and support that with Aquinas' account in the Summa and in De Malo.
I wrote:
Furthermore Vix Pervenit explicitly states what kinds of contracts are licit for gain: non-mutuum contracts.
"Nor is it denied that it is very often possible for someone, by means of contracts differing entirely from [mutuum] loans, to spend and invest money legitimately either to provide oneself with an annual income or to engage in legitimate trade and business. From these types of contracts honest gain may be made."
quote:That is to make the dubious assumption that the parable of the talents is an allegory and that the man going away is God.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
We know from the Gospels that God expects interest on his (unsecured) loans, otherwise why would the servant entrusted with one talent have been castigated for putting it in the ground instead of in the bank?
quote:How is that dubious?
Originally posted by leo:
quote:That is to make the dubious assumption that the parable of the talents is an allegory and that the man going away is God.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
We know from the Gospels that God expects interest on his (unsecured) loans, otherwise why would the servant entrusted with one talent have been castigated for putting it in the ground instead of in the bank?
quote:Exactly the point I was making.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
The prohibition of usury has no more dependence on specific economic theory than "thou shalt not steal".
quote:Paying off interest can become a form of slavery, yes. And the loan being unsecured may be a necessary condition for that to happen. But it is not, I think,a sufficient condition.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
usury was recognized as a form of slavery by pagans long before Christ let alone scholastic philosophy.
quote:"Secured" and "unsecured" are somewhat misleading terms for the distinction being made. The important point is not what is being lent, or why, but the extent of the obligation on the borrower.
Originally posted by Russ:
You seem to mean something that involves categorising every loan into one of two forms of contract that were prevalent in a particular time and place. Which seems to contain an economic proposition.
Now it's possible that you mean something like "secured loans" and "unsecured loans" which could reasonably be taken to be mutually exclusive and exhaustive categories that could be applied irrespective of any economic understanding. In which case, my apologies - I'm getting the wrong idea from the way you express things.
quote:Law, whether canon or civil, should try to express morality, to encourage good behaviour and discourage bad, but should never, however canon, be regarded as defining them.
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
"Licit" and "illicit" are canon law terms. Their definitions are pretty clear cut, and though it's understandable that connotations from their conversational use might be brought to mind, those connotations are ultimately irrelevant to their use in legal terminology.
quote:The landlord is the Roman Empire
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
quote:How is that dubious?
Originally posted by leo:
quote:That is to make the dubious assumption that the parable of the talents is an allegory and that the man going away is God.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
We know from the Gospels that God expects interest on his (unsecured) loans, otherwise why would the servant entrusted with one talent have been castigated for putting it in the ground instead of in the bank?
quote:That would make sense if interest is seen purely as a risk premium.
Originally posted by Eliab:
The principle is that if you lend anything, and want to charge interest, you can't keep the borrower on the hook for the full debt with unlimited liability, regardless of what happens to the asset lent. You can have the right to collect interest*, OR you can have the right to unlimited enforcement of the debt* - you can't justly have both.
quote:That's an interesting interpretation, and one which works on the parable considered by itself. But in the context of Mt 25, it's sandwiched between the parable of the wise & foolish virgins (be ready for the bridegroom!) and a prophecy about the last judgment. I'm not sure how it makes sense to have an arc of discourse about being prepared for Christ's return and the Last Judgment and then interrupt it with an irrelevant jab at the Roman Empire.
Originally posted by leo:
quote:The landlord is the Roman Empire
Originally posted by Fr Weber:
quote:How is that dubious?
Originally posted by leo:
quote:That is to make the dubious assumption that the parable of the talents is an allegory and that the man going away is God.
Originally posted by Erroneous Monk:
We know from the Gospels that God expects interest on his (unsecured) loans, otherwise why would the servant entrusted with one talent have been castigated for putting it in the ground instead of in the bank?
quote:If in thinking about this topic you don't recognise opportunity costs as being real, then that's not a moral failing, it's a deficiency in your economics.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
In either case (law or virtue), there is no dependence upon particular economic theories, theories of currency, etc. The principles involved in usury... ...are as universal as the principles involved in theft.
quote:And you are using the term 'real' equivocally, which is confounding your capacity to understand the point.
Originally posted by Russ:
If in thinking about this topic you don't recognise opportunity costs as being real, then that's not a moral failing, it's a deficiency in your economics.
quote:That is precisely what bounds morally licit investment of capital for profit under the usury doctrine.
Originally posted by Russ:
...and therefore conceive of a [morally licit investment of capital] contract [for profit] as [encumbering] the ownership-property of Things rather than as creating obligations upon [that is, enslaving] people ...
quote:There may be aspects of this which I don't yet understand, which is a reason for continuing to discuss...
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Whether one agrees with the doctrine or not is one thing. But if you think it depends on economic theory or can be refuted by economic conditions or practices, you don't yet understand it.
quote:The former is a matter of just pricing not specifically usury, and the latter does not arise in non-usurious investment of capital for profit because non-usurious investment of capital for profit does not encumber the borrower personally.
Originally posted by Russ:
... it seems to me that you're saying that usury is not to do with the rate of interest being excessive, or how ruthlessly the lender pursues the borrower for the debt at the point of default ...
quote:That is a correct statement of the doctrine.
- these might be moral issues, but they are issues additional to the question of whether the sin of usury has been committed. That sin is committed by the lender, at the point where the contract [of investment of capital for profit] is signed, if that contract creates an obligation on the borrower personally, rather than limiting the lender's rights to title over some collateral Thing.
quote:That is one explanation from one point of view of _why_ usury is morally wrong. But as with many moral precepts there may be all sorts of reasons, discussions, and controversy over the reasons why it is immoral.
And it's a sin because such an obligation is tantamount to slavery.
quote:The obligation on you extends to the work the barber actually did: the haircut. If he charged you for two haircuts - interest on the time to walk from the chair to the cash register - that would be what the medievals called "hidden usury." If you actually damage him in some way (say by refusing to pay for a long time) you may be liable for damages in addition to the price of the haircut, as a fraud or thief is liable. So one of the other ways of 'seeing' why charging usury is immoral is that the lender in his pursuit of profit treats the borrower as if he were a thief or fraud, or at least negligent.
When I go to the barber, the implicit contract between us is that he will cut my hair and that I will pay him for this service a sum of money equal to the fee that he has displayed in his window. In the short period of time between getting up from the barber's chair and handing over a tenner on the way out, there is an obligation on me personally - no title to any Thing is involved.
quote:Agreed. I think you've done a good job of explaining your view of what the definition usury is. I would also agree that the various features of that definition set out criteria that are morally relevant - they are things that ought to be considered in deciding on what is fair. What I think has yet to be established by argument is that the definition in itself determines some acts to be immoral. I don't think that you've shown that the set "technically usury, but nonetheless just" is an empty one.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
Again, though, understanding what usury _is_ and understanding _why it is morally wrong_ are distinct.
quote:Only if you accept the paradigm. If you don't accept that usury is immoral by definition (as opposed to accepting that usury tends to be unjust) then the edge cases help define what it is that is in principle objectionable. We are all agreed (I hope) that usury which is blatantly exploitative is immoral - to test what combinations of unlimited liability, loan security, and level of interest rate and purported justifications for charging that rate we are prepared to approve we need to consider edge cases.
Also in general it should be noted that invoking edge cases or confusing cases in moral theology to invalidate paradigmatic cases is bad reasoning.
quote:That wasn't my objective. My objective was to show what the RC doctrine on usury is, to show that it has not changed, to show its independence of economic theories and conditions, to answer some frequently asked questions about the subject which naturally arise once someone actually understands the doctrine, and to provide a few different perspectives on why usury is immoral.
Originally posted by Eliab:
What I think has yet to be established by argument is that the definition in itself determines some acts to be immoral. I don't think that you've shown that the set "technically usury, but nonetheless just" is an empty one.
quote:Fair enough. You've done all that pretty well. Although "hasn't changed..." appears to mean "hasn't formally revised, but no longer enforces...". Also, what you've shown to be independent of econmic theory is the definition of usury only. I don't know whether or not you'd agree that differing economic conditions might reduce or eliminate moral culpability for usury.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
That wasn't my objective. My objective was to show what the RC doctrine on usury is, to show that it has not changed, to show its independence of economic theories and conditions, to answer some frequently asked questions about the subject which naturally arise once someone actually understands the doctrine, and to provide a few different perspectives on why usury is immoral.
quote:Yes, but the edge cases are the interesting ones for all those questions. Asking whether killing in self-defence, or in war, or to end the suffering of someone who longs to die, is morally acceptable tells us much more about what our ethical principles are than asking whether these things fall within a technical definition of murder. Asking whether sexually open marriages are ever moral is more interesting than pointing out that they are technically adulterous. Asking what may lawfully be said when angry and hurt with God says more about faith than condemning crass offensiveness.
I suppose one other objective is to show that when it comes to casuistry about boundary or 'edge' cases, usury as a moral subject matter is not really any different from other subjects. "Technically murder, but nonetheless just; technically adulterous, but nonetheless just; technically blasphemy, but nonetheless just ..." are the sorts of things that people have always argued about and will continue to argue about no matter what I say,
quote:Suppose it's wrong for all those reasons (which I do think). Demonstrating that there could be a convincing case why it was not wrong for one of those reasons, would not make it permissible, yet alone just.
Originally posted by Eliab:
... What exactly is wrong with adultery? Is in wrong because it abuses a divine ordinance? Or is a breach of trust? Or because it offends sexual purity? Or dissolves social bonds, risks public health, damages the line of inheritance of property, endangers the secure upbringing of children, or simply hurts innocent people? Asking about open marriages or other edge cases helps to sort out what it is about the paradigm case of adultery that I actually consider to be wrong. ...
quote:Agreed, and in fact I make the point myself. The tendency toward lax 'pastoral' enforcement isn't limited to the subject of usury -- consider (for example) the rate of annulment of marriages despite no formal changes in marriage doctrine.
Originally posted by Eliab:
Although "hasn't changed..." appears to mean "hasn't formally revised, but no longer enforces...".
quote:"Reduce", to be sure, and invincible ignorance can eliminate culpability for any objectively immoral act. The seriousness and culpability for sin always depends on circumstances, even when the objective action under consideration is intrinsically immoral qua action. Lying in response to "does this dress make me look fat?" involves a different degree of moral seriousness from lying in response to "is this the man who committed the murder?"
Also, what you've shown to be independent of economic theory is the definition of usury only. I don't know whether or not you'd agree that differing economic conditions might reduce or eliminate moral culpability for usury.
quote:I agree that edge cases and casuistry can be interesting and useful for discussion. I wasn't denigrating casuistry in general (I couldn't do so without irony, having engaged in plenty of it myself), but pointing out a common fallacious rhetorical move, which I for my own amusement call 'transitivity of bafflement' -- the importation confusion about edge cases into clear cases. In this I am also being rather unapologetically Roman Catholic, following the lead of St. John Paul II in _Veritatis Splendour_:
Yes, but the edge cases are the interesting ones for all those questions. Asking whether killing in self-defence, or in war, or to end the suffering of someone who longs to die, is morally acceptable tells us much more about what our ethical principles are than asking whether these things fall within a technical definition of murder. ...
quote:
"Such theories however are not faithful to the Church's teaching, when they believe they can justify, as morally good, deliberate choices of kinds of behaviour contrary to the commandments of the divine and natural law. These theories cannot claim to be grounded in the Catholic moral tradition. Although the latter did witness the development of a casuistry which tried to assess the best ways to achieve the good in certain concrete situations, it is nonetheless true that this casuistry concerned only cases in which the law was uncertain, and thus the absolute validity of negative moral precepts, which oblige without exception, was not called into question."
quote:It is a question of whether claims for return of principal and profitable interest are asserted against persons or against property (subjects or objects). Treating people as only things should be treated (subjects as only objects should be treated) is fundamental to what makes many concrete kinds of actions immoral.
Originally posted by Enoch:
... I lack the ability to believe that if usury is universally a sin (which I'm not convinced about), one can somehow make it all right by finagling pilpul about differences between sorts of security.
quote:Stealing a dime from a rich man isn't a wickedness of the same degree as stealing all of the property of a poor man who depends upon that property for his livelihood. But they both fall under the moral species of theft.
It seems to me that being paid a reasonable (usually too low) rate of interest on one's deposit by a bank or building society, or being charged a higher rate on one's mortgage is not a wickedness in the way that being a pay day lender, either as national business or your friendly neighbourhood one with big dogs, is.
quote:Seems to me that there are three cases. The set of valid reasons why something is immoral may have many members, one member, or be empty.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
as with many moral precepts there may be all sorts of reasons, discussions, and controversy over the reasons why it is immoral.
quote:Usury involves the intrinsic nature of the agreement between the parties. If you go to the barber (or hire any other worker to do a job) without having a means on hand to pay, you have committed a kind of fraud or theft against him. (Presumably he did not agree to cut your hair without being paid).
Originally posted by Russ:
You've suggested that for a lender to hold a borrower personally liable for paying for the service that the lender provides is to treat the borrower like an object. Whilst a barber can licitly hold his customer personally liable for paying for the service (and as you rightly suggest may be additionally entitled to compensation for unreasonable delay in payment). What's the difference ?
quote:The barber expects to be paid as I leave the shop. The builder hands me as he leaves an invoice to be paid within 21 days. There is a period - however short - between the performance of the service and payment of the agreed price, when I as the customer have an unsecured personal obligation. And that's a normal part of a service economy, with no fraud involved. Unsecured personal obligation doesn't make a sin.
Originally posted by zippycatholic:
If you go to the barber (or hire any other worker to do a job) without having a means on hand to pay, you have committed a kind of fraud or theft against him...
...The prohibition of usury does not mean that it is impossible for unsecured personal obligations to arise when someone actually commits fraud, theft, or negligence. Fraud, theft, and negligence are by their nature extrinsic to the agreement
quote:As Ambassador Kosh would say: <thunk, tinkle, whirr> Yes.
So is this papal bull, and the Year of Mercy it announces a genuine attempt to bring people in to the mercy of Christ, or is it an attempt to water down the harder teachings of the Church to accommodate the secular age? Or, in other words, is it part of the titanic struggle to which this thread refers.
quote:I get the depressing sense that anything that any Pope or bishop does to try to improve things, to try to make the Catholic Church better or more successful or effective (by whatever standard) will be seen as part of the "titanic struggle" - that it becomes a lens for interpreting every conceivable action.
Originally posted by PaulTH*:
is it part of the titanic struggle to which this thread refers.
