Theology

[GDomer09]

So many reasons on here why I joined a non-denominational Christian church a long time ago. You guys have my head spinning!

 

[zelezo vlk]

So many reasons on here why I joined a non-denominational Christian church a long time ago. You guys have my head spinning!

Leave. Come to the Catholic Church and help us to remove the dung that has long infested Her, while making use of the Sacraments.

 

[wizards8507]

Bombshell book alleges a Vatican gay subculture, hypocrisy

 

[Irish YJ]

380 Baptist pastors and volunteers have been credibly accused of sexually abusing 700 victims over the last 20 years.

If only their pastors were allowed to marry...

Sorry Whiskey, just seeing this.

The data is imperfect, but you actually might have helped prove my assertion.

It's rather hard to glean anything from this as the numbers include pastors, deacons, Sunday school teachers and volunteers. I'd love to see the breakdown if available and only use those ordained (I'm assuming if we included the same in Catholic #s, we'd have many more)

But let's keep the 380 ( out of 15M SBs total).... That number is over the last 20 years IIRC. Just last year, cases against over 300 priests in Pennsylvania parishes alone were found to have been covered up. And that number I believe is thought to be still under-reported. 24% (Catholic) of PA's 12.8M people would be about 3M. So 380 out of 15M vs 300 out of 3M.

I'd also argue that abuse in SBC is probably more likely to get reported to authorities as the weight of their institutional pressures is far less.

Not sure what accepted stats are in terms of the Catholic Church, but I posted and article in the "The Church in the News" thread that included this.

The expert on priestly sexuality, the late A. W. Richard Sipe, was a psychotherapist, former priest, and definitive liberal. He was characterized mischievously in the movie Spotlight as “a hippie ex-priest who’s shacking up with a nun.” Sipe reckoned that only about 50 percent of American priests are celibate, that at least a third are gay, and that between 6 and 9 percent of priests are pedophiles.

I'd love to see stats on % of homo vs hetero ped abuse in both the SBC and the Catholic church. If for instance the majority of abuse is homo in nature, and at a greater % than hetero (compared to the makeup), then yes, I think allowing marriage (inserting hetero men with healthy committed sexual relationships) would absolutely combat these issues. And at worst would help combat the priest shortage.

 

[Irish YJ]

Bombshell book alleges a Vatican gay subculture, hypocrisy

I don't see at a bombshell at all. Just more of what we already suspect. Here's an article I posted in the "The Church in the News" thread. It covers more than the gay culture, and is an interesting read just in terms of the politics.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/10/pope-francis-benedict-conflict-catholic-church

 

[Whiskeyjack]

So many reasons on here why I joined a non-denominational Christian church a long time ago. You guys have my head spinning!

(1) Nondoms are just Baptists that like to drink; and (2) not clear what reasons you're referring to here, but if you think your churches are somehow immune from this plague, you're sorely mistaken.

Bombshell book alleges a Vatican gay subculture, hypocrisy

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Before anyone gets too excited about Frederic Martel's newest exposé on homosexuals in the Vatican, let's recall his body of prior work.<br><br>Remember: cum grano salis. <a href="https://t.co/iYs5nM05Mz">pic.twitter.com/iYs5nM05Mz</a></p>— Radical Catholic (@RadicalCath) <a href="https://twitter.com/RadicalCath/status/1096141742024335361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

But let's keep the 380 ( out of 15M SBs total).... That number is over the last 20 years IIRC. Just last year, cases against over 300 priests in Pennsylvania parishes alone were found to have been covered up. And that number I believe is thought to be still under-reported. 24% (Catholic) of PA's 12.8M people would be about 3M. So 380 out of 15M vs 300 out of 3M.

The Pennsylvania grand jury report is far from reliable, but even taking it at face value, it spans 70 years v. the much more recent timeline on the SBC allegations.

I'd also argue that abuse in SBC is probably more likely to get reported to authorities as the weight of their institutional pressures is far less.

I guess you don't know many Baptists then.

I'd love to see stats on % of homo vs hetero ped abuse in both the SBC and the Catholic church. If for instance the majority of abuse is homo in nature, and at a greater % than hetero (compared to the makeup), then yes, I think allowing marriage (inserting hetero men with healthy committed sexual relationships) would absolutely combat these issues. And at worst would help combat the priest shortage.

My mind still boggles at this argument. You think that men, who voluntarily took a vow of celibacy yet broke it by sexually abusing teenage boys, would somehow have turned out as outstanding priests and fathers had they been allowed to marry at some point?

 

[wizards8507]

Whiskey, what is that tweet supposed to imply?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Whiskey, what is that tweet supposed to imply?

He's a French writer and LGBTQ activist who's schtick is "everything is gay." Frodo and Sam? Gay. David and Jonathan? Also gay. The Vatican? You guessed it...

There's definitely a Lavender Mafia within the Curia that fits his description, but to assert that 80% of all Vatican priests are active sodomites is an outrageous calumny.

Point being, he's got an agenda that doesn't involve anything resembling a healthy reform of the Church hierarchy.

 

[Irish YJ]

The Pennsylvania grand jury report is far from reliable, but even taking it at face value, it spans 70 years v. the much more recent timeline on the SBC allegations.

-just using pure math. 20 vs 70 years (3.5 times). 3M vs 15M (5 times).
-and again the SBC numbers are inflated to include volunteers, etc.
-i think we can all agree the older the reports, the less reliable, and also the less likely to report in the first place.

I guess you don't know many Baptists then.

Actually, my mother's family (11 total including my mother) is full of Baptists. My Uncle Don was a Minister with his own Church for 40-50 years. 2 of the 11 siblings converted to Catholicism (my mother, may aunt and Godmother, who both married Catholics), and one married a Jehovah's Witness (she didn't really convert fully).

The other 8 remained good Baptists. I actually spent a good amount of my young days at my uncles as my aunt babysat me for a few years. While I was always Catholic, I went to plenty of Baptist services as a child, and my x-wife is a Baptist (we agreed to alternate services).

My Father's side were/are Catholic (10 total siblings).

What I can say, is the there is FAR MORE weight from the Catholic institution.

My mind still boggles at this argument. You think that men, who voluntarily took a vow of celibacy yet broke it by sexually abusing teenage boys, would somehow have turned out as outstanding priests and fathers had they been allowed to marry at some point?

If the you agree with Sipe's numbers that only 50 percent of priests are celibate, than the vow is sham-ful in itself. Sipe's other assertions are that a third are gay, and 6-9 percent are peds.

My point is that IF the majority of sexual ped behavior is homosexual in nature, it's logically coming from the third that are homosexual. Allowing married hetero sexual men who don't have to make a vow which 50% already ignore, would 1) decrease the gay sub culture, and 2) decrease the number of men with pent up sexual desire.

 

[ACamp1900]

He's a French writer and LGBTQ activist who's schtick is "everything is gay." Frodo and Sam? Gay. David and Jonathan? Also gay. The Vatican? You guessed it...

Whisky and Wiz.....

 

[Bluto]

Whisky and Wiz.....

That’s funny. I wonder if the French guys dog is gay?

 

[Irish YJ]

Whisky and Wiz.....

woke up..... for a dump....

not nice.

but funny.

wouldn't pick those 2. i'd only hook my fam with one.

 

[Legacy]

McCarrick has been defrocked by the Vatican.

McCarrick removed from priesthood after being found guilty of abuse, solicitation (NCR)

 

[ickythump1225]

He needs to see the inside of a federal prison cell for the rest of his days.

 

[BGIF]

He needs to see the inside of a federal prison cell for the rest of his days.

If the intent is punishment, it would need to be a women's prison.

 

[no.1IrishFan]

He needs to see the inside of a federal prison cell for the rest of his days.

Agree.
He should die there.
Then be instantaneously warped to paradise for eternity because he said sorry and meant it.

 

[Legacy]

Pedophile heaven is to be protected past statute of limitations by established churches, to have a source of children within those churches, and to retire in comfort. Otherwise, mens' prison have ways of dealing with pedophiles.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Agree.
He should die there.
Then be instantaneously warped to paradise for eternity because he said sorry and meant it.

I wanted to address this, as it's a common misconception. Sin creates two types of liability within the sinner: (1) in the case of mortal sin, a liability of guilty with eternal consequences; and (2) for all sins, even venial ones, a liability of temporal punishment.

Making a good confession absolves one of the former (though McCarrick and his allies have not shown any signs of true contrition or a firm purpose of amendment). But only an indulgence (which also requires a proper interior disposition) can remit the latter.

So no, confession isn't an express ticket to paradise for monsters like McCarrick. If he's able to avoid the damnation he deserves via a good confession, he's still going to suffer in purgatory for a very long time.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Get red-pilled on usury by reading Zippy Catholic's (RIP) FAQ.

Here's a recent Twitter thread on miracles:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Lots of atheists think there are only, historical and philosophical arguments for Christianity, so I want to make a thread showing, a rarely mentioned form of proof for God’s existence: photographic evidence. Feel free to link this to the next fedora tipper you see.-</p>— Tradawg ������������ (@Tradawg_) <a href="https://twitter.com/Tradawg_/status/1093995160726372353?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

And here's a letter written by St. Alphonsus Liguori in 1774:

One can find similar sentiments being expressed by Saints like Peter Damian (11th century) all the way back to John Chrysostom (4th century) and the Desert Fathers. The Church has always been plagued by wicked clerics.

 

[zelezo vlk]

I did not know Zippy Catholic died. RIP

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Tapatalk

 

[no.1IrishFan]

@ Whiskey
I was painting with a broad evangelical upbringing brush, but that’s certainly a fair dogmatic distinction.

With regards to the link provided concerning miracles, I still have one hurdle to get over before I can get there. Nearly all faiths have similar evidence for miracles performed by their gods. I think we might have briefly spoke about this concerning excorcisms IIRC.
Without going into an unnecessary amount of detail and examples, I find it troubling that the one true god wouldn’t separate himself in an non-subjective way from other false gods.

 

[Legacy]

‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out
The crisis over sexuality in the Catholic Church goes beyond abuse. It goes to the heart of the priesthood, into a closet that is trapping thousands of men. (NYT)

Excerpt:

Fewer than about 10 priests in the United States have dared to come out publicly. But gay men probably make up at least 30 to 40 percent of the American Catholic clergy, according to dozens of estimates from gay priests themselves and researchers. Some priests say the number is closer to 75 percent. One priest in Wisconsin said he assumed every priest was gay unless he knows for a fact he is not. A priest in Florida put it this way: “A third are gay, a third are straight and a third don’t know what the hell they are.”

 

[GDomer09]

‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out
The crisis over sexuality in the Catholic Church goes beyond abuse. It goes to the heart of the priesthood, into a closet that is trapping thousands of men. (NYT)

Excerpt:

I love all the research done to project such high numbers of gays in priest hood. Oh, wait there wasn't any?

I've never understood why a gay person would want to be in these church positions. They've read the book?!?! If you are internally struggling with such sin and still take the position of Priest, you are caging yourself. This doesn't surprise me though in our over the top victimhood society. If you feel caged, open the door and walk out. Nobody's forcing them to stay. They are in fact like the article said, "pushing them away". It's one thing to be a Christian/Catholic and struggle with demons, we all do, but holding a leadership position while openly exploring such demons is a big no no.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

@ Whiskey
I was painting with a broad evangelical upbringing brush, but that’s certainly a fair dogmatic distinction.

With regards to the link provided concerning miracles, I still have one hurdle to get over before I can get there. Nearly all faiths have similar evidence for miracles performed by their gods. I think we might have briefly spoke about this concerning excorcisms IIRC.
Without going into an unnecessary amount of detail and examples, I find it troubling that the one true god wouldn’t separate himself in an non-subjective way from other false gods.

Our medical authorities haven't yet been able to produce proof sufficient to convert all the many homeopaths, anti-vaxxers, and others such skeptics. Does that shake your faith in modern medicine, too?

It's ultimately a question of authority. For centuries, the Church has been carefully vetting miracle claims in order to protect the faithful from hoaxes and con artists. The vast majority (99.999%+) are not valid, and are quickly discredited. Those that appear legitimate (consistent with Scripture, lacking any non-supernatural explanation, etc.) are investigated exhaustively. That investigation nearly always involves secular scientists, doctors, and other "adversarial" parties so that naturalistic causes can be completely ruled out. If, at the conclusion of this process (which often takes decades), it still hasn't been discredited, the Vatican endorses it. There's no other religion that does anything similar to this.

‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out
The crisis over sexuality in the Catholic Church goes beyond abuse. It goes to the heart of the priesthood, into a closet that is trapping thousands of men. (NYT)

Excerpt:

My reaction is similar to the outlandish claims made in Martel's recent book. The Times has an agenda, which is not consistent with unbiased reporting on this subject. No one is forced to become a priest. The discernment process, which last years before vows are taken, gives those who experience same-sex attraction ample opportunity to leave. And honestly, nothing stops them from leaving now. Pope Francis has explicitly stated that such men should simply quit the priesthood rather than cause scandal if they cannot fulfill the vows they voluntarily entered into.

Notably absent from this article is anything about the large majority of priests who find celibacy to be a challenging but very rewarding discipline, and who are very happy with their chosen state in life. The Times and this increasingly vocal minority of gay priests are seeking to undermine ancient doctrine, not reform the Church.

 

[Legacy]

Research? How?

I agree that any priest who cannot fulfill his vow of celibacy should leave the Church's ministry. With the revelation of so many in the the ecclesiastical hierarchy participating, disregarding or neglecting pedophilia across the globe, one can reasonably assume that the Church will continue to overlook the sexual activity of its priests with consenting adults.

Francis's condemnation of the lavish lifestyles of some bishops, e.g. "the bishop of bling", reminding them of another of their vows -poverty - is as much as we may expect with regard to sexually active priests.

I did not know who Martel was and his book on the Vatican, but do now.

 

[no.1IrishFan]

Our medical authorities haven't yet been able to produce proof sufficient to convert all the many homeopaths, anti-vaxxers, and others such skeptics. Does that shake your faith in modern medicine, too?

It's ultimately a question of authority. For centuries, the Church has been carefully vetting miracle claims in order to protect the faithful from hoaxes and con artists. The vast majority (99.999%+) are not valid, and are quickly discredited. Those that appear legitimate (consistent with Scripture, lacking any non-supernatural explanation, etc.) are investigated exhaustively. That investigation nearly always involves secular scientists, doctors, and other "adversarial" parties so that naturalistic causes can be completely ruled out. If, at the conclusion of this process (which often takes decades), it still hasn't been discredited, the Vatican endorses it. There's no other religion that does anything similar to this.



My reaction is similar to the outlandish claims made in Martel's recent book. The Times has an agenda, which is not consistent with unbiased reporting on this subject. No one is forced to become a priest. The discernment process, which last years before vows are taken, gives those who experience same-sex attraction ample opportunity to leave. And honestly, nothing stops them from leaving now. Pope Francis has explicitly stated that such men should simply quit the priesthood rather than cause scandal if they cannot fulfill the vows they voluntarily entered into.

Notably absent from this article is anything about the large majority of priests who find celibacy to be a challenging but very rewarding discipline, and who are very happy with their chosen state in life. The Times and this increasingly vocal minority of gay priests are seeking to undermine ancient doctrine, not reform the Church.

I don’t have faith in modern medicine. To the extent of our current knowledge, I can objectively prove it works. If some choose to not accept modern medicine, that’s fine. But again, I can provide evidence for its effectiveness in a way and amount that can’t be done with miracles.

To be honest, while I appreciate the level of scrutiny applied to claims of miracles, all the work is still in front of you. To claim proof of miracles from a god that has no objective evidence for his existence in the first place, is placing the carriage in front of the horse.

 

[no.1IrishFan]

I don’t want to hijack this thread and turn it into a “prove god” thread. I enjoy reading it and don’t want to kill the conversations being had by going down that path. I couldn’t help myself when I read that demons were to blame for sexual assault, so I threw my sarcastic 2 cents in.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Research? How?

This article on the recent canonization of Bl. John Henry Newman touches a bit on the process. The vast majority of miracle claims are medical--sudden and otherwise inexplicable healings after someone prays for the intercession of a known saint (or a potential saint, which can lead to the intercessor being canonized). The Vatican puts a great deal of effort into what their diagnosis was at various points, who they prayed to, at what point the claimant came into contact with a particular relic, etc. Depending on the case, it can take decades and hundreds of interviews. Medical professionals are always consulted to ensure there is no known naturalistic explanation for how the person could have been spontaneously cured.

The point is that the Church doesn't handwave at every crank who claims to have seen an apparition of the Blessed Mother as "proof" for our doctrinal claims. They understand that a single hoax or con artist can cause far more damage to the Church's credibility than any number of genuine miraculous healings or private revelations.

I agree that any priest who cannot fulfill his vow of celibacy should leave the Church's ministry. With the revelation of so many in the the ecclesiastical hierarchy participating, disregarding or neglecting pedophilia across the globe, one can reasonably assume that the Church will continue to overlook the sexual activity of its priests with consenting adults.

Bingo. One of our biggest problems right now is that many in the Church hierarchy don't see sexual relations between a priest (who voluntarily took a vow of celibacy) and a consenting adult as a big deal. McCarrick was widely known to have preyed on young seminarians for years which, vows and sodomy aside, is obviously predatory due to the power imbalance involved; but the thing that brought him down was the revelation that he had sexually abused a minor (his own nephew/godson, the first person he had ever baptized.) The Church's teachings on human sexuality are perfectly rational, but when our leaders jettison them in favor of the liberal emphasis on consent, hypocrisy is unavoidable.

I don’t have faith in modern medicine. To the extent of our current knowledge, I can objectively prove it works. If some choose to not accept modern medicine, that’s fine. But again, I can provide evidence for its effectiveness in a way and amount that can’t be done with miracles.

To be honest, while I appreciate the level of scrutiny applied to claims of miracles, all the work is still in front of you. To claim proof of miracles from a god that has no objective evidence for his existence in the first place, is placing the carriage in front of the horse.

By "objective", you seem to mean "material" here. But we all accept the existence of immaterial things. For example, math, logic and the human mind are all abstractions that are still real. We can't empirically prove them, but they exist nonetheless.

Demanding material proof of an immaterial substance such as spirit is like asking an astrophysicist to prove the existence of black holes without using a telescope. You're forcing your opponents to tie one hand behind their backs by taking away the most effective tools for demonstrating the hypothesis, and then dismissing them for not producing strong enough evidence.

I don’t want to hijack this thread and turn it into a “prove god” thread. I enjoy reading it and don’t want to kill the conversations being had by going down that path. I couldn’t help myself when I read that demons were to blame for sexual assault, so I threw my sarcastic 2 cents in.

No need for apologies! This is my favorite thread, and you've made several good contributions to it.

Marc Barnes just published an article at Postliberal Thought titled "Adam Without Scarcity":

I. THAT LIBERALISM IS JUST ONE BIG, BAD BIBLE COMMENTARY

The trouble with liberalism is the trouble with all heresies -- it has no idea that it is a heresy. It believes that it developed sui generis, without parents, as a sudden insight of an enlightened mind which finally decided to be rational, see all men as equal, abhor slavery, recognize democracy as the ideal form of government, posit the nature of man as a self-interested actor, relegate religion to the sphere of private belief, and otherwise constitute the world of open elections and iPad sales that we know and love today.

This is, from a historical point of view, rubbish, a word which here means, “unable to hold up to the light of an even cursory reading of the liberal canon.” It is also balderdash, a more technical term which highlights “the near-impossibility that any worldview would be constructed out of anything but the worldview which preceded it,” which was, for everyone from the Puritan Fathers to Adam Smith, Christianity.

To put it more clearly: liberalism is an interpretation of Scripture. To put it more coarsely: liberalism is the sum of many heretical commentaries on the Bible, especially on the Pentateuch, which were extremely popular between the 16th and the 19th centuries, and which have now become normative. To live and move and breath as a “modern” is simply to live out this set of commentaries without citing them.

This is a coarse summary, because, unlike the Medieval or the Patristic commentary traditions, where orthodox and heterodox thinkers alike clearly set out to provide a gloss on a particular passage of Scripture or an attack on a particularly onerous theology, liberalism blossoms within a literary tradition of long-windedness. As Jacques Ellul put it, a “characteristic of this scientific literature is that it attempts to set down in one book the whole realm of knowledge. It is not rare to find, in works on law in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, extended treatments of archaeology, theology, psychology, and linguistics, not to mention history and literature. Entire chapters concerned with magical practices or Peruvian sociology may interrupt the course of a book devoted to revenues or to the jurisprudence of the Parliament of Bordeaux.” [1]

Within this tradition, no one bats an eye when Locke casually interprets the Tower of Babel as the establishment of a Commonwealth in his Treatises on Government; when Hobbes calls Moses an absolute sovereign in the parts of Leviathan that no one reads; when John Adams includes in his correspondence with Thomas Jefferson an argument disdaining the “total lack of political realism on the part of the [Hebrew] prophets [2]. It falls to the critic to pull out the scriptural exegesis from the humanistic attempt to say everything about everything; but without addressing the liberal fathers’ appeal to Scripture, we fail to understand them, and thus their progeny -- ourselves.

II. THAT MALTHUSIAN ECONOMICS IS A COMMENTARY ON GENESIS

Thomas Malthus famously articulated the basic principle which props up liberal economic theory: scarcity. We live his Essay on the Principle of Population when we presume that human beings, by virtue of living within a world of scarce (finite, limited) goods, can be described as racing against misery, in a state of competition for individual survival. Rather less famously, Malthus, an Anglican priest, defended this vision of man in a re-reading of Genesis.

The reason for the re-reading is obvious: If increased population dooms men to war for finite resources, then the Genesis blessing “be fruitful and multiply” is no blessing, but a curse. So Malthus sought to reconcile a scarce universe and a misery-damned humanity with a God of blessing and abundance.

III. THAT MALTHUS WAS A BIG, BAD HERETIC

Malthus posited, first of all, that God was not omnipotent. The reason he created a universe of scarce resources was because he created under the necessity of developing the mind of man: “[T]o the Great Creator, Almighty as he is, a certain process may be necessary, a certain time (or at least what appears to us as time) may be requisite, in order to form beings with those exalted qualities of mind which will fit them for his high purposes”. [3]

It is not the case that misery and toil are evils which man must bear insofar as he disobeys God. Rather, God creates the world with the intention that man will be threatened with misery, as it is precisely the threat of misery and death, and the subsequent necessity of toil, which serves as “a process necessary, to awaken inert, chaotic matter, into spirit; to sublimate the dust of the earth into soul; to elicit an æthereal spark from the clod of clay.” This leads Malthus to assert his real heretical whopper, that “the original sin of man, is the torpor and corruption of the chaotic matter, in which he may be said to be born.”

Let us be clear of the reasoning that now forms the substratum of our own. Matter is evil. Mind is good. To get mind out of matter, it was necessary that God make a scarce universe, rather than a universe of abundant provision, because “[t]he first great awakeners of the mind seem to be the wants of the body.”

They are the first stimulants that rouse the brain of infant man into sentient activity: and such seems to be the sluggishness of original matter, that unless, by a peculiar course of excitements, other wants, equally powerful, are generated, these stimulants seem, even afterwards, to be necessary, to continue that activity which they first awakened. The savage would slumber forever under his tree, unless he were roused from his torpor by the cravings of hunger or the pinchings of cold; and the exertions that he makes to avoid these evils, by procuring food, and building himself a covering, are the exercises which form and keep in motion his faculties, which otherwise would sink into listless inactivity. From all that experience has taught us concerning the structure of the human mind, if those stimulants to exertion, which arise from the wants of the body, were removed from the mass of mankind, we have much more reason to think that they would be sunk to the level of brutes, from a deficiency of excitements, than that they would be raised to the rank of philosophers by the possession of leisure.

Toil, instead of a punishment, becomes the means of man’s salvation from his original (and sinful) state of being mixed up with torpid matter. This description is “fundamental,” because Malthus applies it, not to man as a sinner, but for man as he is created by God.

Malthus’ heresies are expansive: He indulges in Manichaeism, with its assertion that matter is evil; Dualism, in which evil is a necessary principle of creation; Pelagianism, with its optimistic belief that man, through toil, can attain his salvation; Gnosticism, by which the development of Mind is posited as the true end of Christianity; and a few more, I don’t doubt. Malthus’ wiser friends encouraged him that his position was untenable, and he stripped his theological groundwork from all subsequent editions of the Essay on Population. [4] This serves as a kind of metaphor for liberalism as a whole, in which a theological “first edition” is stricken from subsequent texts which entire generations believe and carry in their backpacks, blithely unaware that the whole show once involved an immensely dubious reading of Scripture. [5]

III. THAT A VIEW OF CREATION AS SCARCE CORRESPONDS TO AN IDOLIZING OF TECHNOLOGY

When I say that Malthusian economics has been digested into the gut of every contemporary man, I do not mean that we have read Malthus, nor that, if we were to read him, we would agree with his dire predictions of overpopulation. I mean that we have absorbed his fundamental description of Adam, the original man, as a being who works because he is compelled by fear for his own survival. Malthus makes the threat of misery essential to the very existence of the human being, and thus describes all of man’s possible actions as strife against the threat of a lack. This is a fundamental theme of classical liberalism, obvious in thinkers like Hobbes and Darwin, but equally present in “the good guys.” It is apparent, for instance, in the theology of John Locke. Locke argued that Adam toiled in the Garden of Eden: “When God gave the world in common to all mankind, he commanded man to work, and man needed to work in order to survive.” Working for his survival, man creates property, which Locke describes as belonging to the order of competition between men: “A man who in obedience to this command of God subdued, tilled and sowed any part of the earth’s surface thereby joined to that land something that was his property, something that no-one else had any title to or could rightfully take from him.” [6]

In our own lives, the liberal account of Adam’s work in the Garden plays out in our inability to rest; to enjoy things for their own sake; to do anything that doesn’t give us money or property; to appreciate art; to imagine a society that does not operate on the principle of competition or a world that is not scarce, but abundant. But it is most apparent in our worship of technology.

As Josef Ratzinger puts it, “technology originally arose as the means for assuring man’s security.” [7] As Jacques Ellul writes in his description of technique, “In his struggle to survive, man interposes an intermediary agency between himself and his environment…It is a means of protection and defense: alone man is too weak to defend himself.” [8] In this respect, technology is a great good -- a tremendous capacity of the human beings to see the world as parts and resources that can be ordered into systems and devices that solve problems, cure diseases, and otherwise fill needs. In another respect, technology is the offspring of famine, war, and death; a shield flung up against the fiery sword that casts mankind out of paradise; a desperate ordering of nature's goods into the effort of staving off death and dearth. Our oscillating opinions about technology -- praising it as our future and fearing it as our apocalypse -- are grounded in this fact: Behind every technological device is an imperfection that it purports to heal. If Malthus, Locke, and all the rest are correct that man is created in and through his confrontation with lack, then man’s natural gaze must be technological.

The book of Genesis takes a polar opposite view. It actively rejects the description of the world as scarce, and it castigates the technological gaze.

IV. THAT ADAM’S LABOR WAS NEITHER FEARFUL, COMPETITIVE, NOR MOTIVATED BY THE PERCEPTION OF HIMSELF OR CREATION AS LACKING

Genesis describes Adam as the one who perfects other created beings. The plants are not made except insofar as Adam exists to till them: “[N]o plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no man to till the ground.” (Genesis 2:5) Likewise, as Ephrem the Syrian says, “the animals came to Adam as a loving shepherd.” [9] The “keeping” of Adam, which the Fathers took in the allegorical sense of keeping the commandment, probably referred in the literal sense to shepherding ( שָׁמַר to keep, watch preserve, i.e. Genesis 30:31 and 1 Samuel 17:20), and just as his presence perfects the plants of the field, his shepherding perfects and finishes the animals: “whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.” (2:19)

Thomas Aquinas argues, concerning Adam, that “God created things not only for their own existence, but also that they might be the principles of other things” (I, Q. 97, a. 3). [7] Thus, when the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till and keep it, we can understand this tilling and keeping as the fulfilment of the nature of the plants that “waited” for their gardener and the animals that waited to be named by their shepherd — their principle of perfection. At this original juncture, labor is not toilsome, but restful, as Augustine says: “Although man was placed in paradise so as to work and guard it, that praiseworthy work was not toilsome.” [8] To till and keep what one is created to till and keep can no more be described as a toil for survival than breathing or laughing at a joke.

Already we begin to catch a glimmer of the orthodoxy from which Malthus departs: There is a kind of work that is not performed for the sake of survival, for fear of a lack, and out of competitive self-interest; it is that work by which man acts according to his nature as a principle of perfection of other beings -- as a gardener and shepherd of this Earth.

This work is restful. Rest does not indicate a lack of activity, as Malthus seemed to assume. As Aquinas puts it, “God did act on the seventh day, not by creating new creatures, but by directing and moving his creatures to the work proper to them.” (I, Q. 97, a. 3) If God, in his Sabbath rest, sustains creation in being and moves it towards its perfection, Adam, made in the image of God, participates in this work-which-is-not-toil, directing and moving God’s creatures to their perfection. This non-technological making, motivated by our nature as gardeners of the world, is difficult to feel and to find outside of the Garden of Eden -- but this is no reason to declare it non-existent and never having been. We experience glimmers of Eden in our daily lives.

V. THAT NOT ALL OF OUR LABOR IS FEARFUL, COMPETITIVE, OR MOTIVATED BY A PERCEPTION OF OURSELVES OR CREATION AS LACKING

To be the master of a tool or of a skill is to have it as a second nature. The child learning to use a hammer toils. He feels it as a thing, a wooden shaft with a heavy, metal end that he must manipulate through space in order to accomplish his aspirations to carpentry. The hammer resists him -- he bashes his thumb, misses the nail, loses his grip. But as he works and learns, he enters into communion with the tool. He no longer “aims” the hammer at the nail -- he hammers the nail, knowing that it will land with the same certainty that he knows his fingernail will land on his nose when he moves to scratch it. Through repeated actions, the hammer becomes an extension of his body. He masters the tool.

Likewise, the amateur gardener toils to perfect the skill of gardening. Insofar as he is an amateur, his skill is only an ideal that his hoeing and pruning tends towards; a body of knowledge that he must continuously look up, get wrong, and look up again. But the man who has gardening as a habit and a “perfection of a power of the soul” does not fight with the soil. His toil is no toil; his work has become his rest; his labor is enjoyable; his technique is no longer technical, but a second nature.

What mastery we enjoy is a hard-earned and fragile product of toil. The mastery Adam enjoyed he enjoyed because he was created as the natural principle of perfection for the garden in which he was planted, whereas we labor to incorporate the tool and the technique into our bodies. Aquinas argues that in the state of innocence, Adam’s work is already incorporated into his body: “of...the body itself man is master not by commanding, but by using...[Likewise] in the state of innocence man’s mastership over plants and inanimate things consisted not in commanding or in changing them, but in making use of them without hindrance.” (I, Q.96, a. 4)

But mastery alone is insufficient to assure that work is restful. A man could perfect a skill and still find the use of it loathsome and wearying. Aquinas argues that God created man to “dress and keep paradise, which dressing would not have involved labor, as it did after sin, but would have been pleasant on account of man’s practical knowledge of the powers of nature.” (I, Q. 102, a. 3) Perfect knowledge of the beings upon which one works is also required to rid work of its toilsome aspect. We see this dimly in the phenomenon by which a “labor of love” does not seem to be a labor at all. A mother who feeds her child enjoys her work, insofar as she wants to perfect the child -- insofar as she knows and loves the child and understands that her labor shepherds that child into its full stature. Aquinas seems to extend the pleasure of love’s labors to all the labors of Paradise. Adam, like Eve, is “the mother of all the living,” the one who nurtures the world to its proper perfection, and thus does not loath to labor, but delights in it.

IV. THAT MOST LIBERAL EXEGESIS IS THE RESURRECTION OF ONE PAGAN MYTH OR ANOTHER

Oh, had I been present when Malthus was scratching out his essay! I would have played a mean, but thoroughly orthodox trick: I would have leaned over his miserable desk and replaced his Bible with a translation of The Atrahasis Epic with a Post-it note reading, “Tommy, dearest, you’re working with the wrong text! Your description of Man, as I am sure you are aware, is not Jewish, but a repetition of the very Babylonian myths that the Jews wrote Genesis to counteract.”

The vision of the restful man for whom the world waits as for its principle of perfection is not spoken by the authors of Genesis in a vacuum, but as a polemic against the dominant myths of the nations with which they warred. The Atrahasis Epic [9], which contains the stories of the Flood and the Ark which the authors of Genesis obviously confronted, likewise contains a description of the reason for Man’s existence:

When the gods were man they did forced labor, they bore drudgery. Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods, the forced labor was heavy, the misery too much...

As in Malthus, there is nothing prior to drudgery. It is concomitant with existence. The solution sought by the gods is not to redeem toil, but to vacate themselves from it. They look for one who they will force to toil for them; they create a state in which a few escape drudgery and misery by a relative increase in the drudgery and misery of others: “the seven great Anunna-gods were burdening the Igigi-gods [lesser gods] with forced labor.”

The myth describes Creation itself as the product of slaves serving their masters: “The Igigi-gods dug the Tigris river and the Euphrates thereafter.” Genesis subverts the dominant mythologies when it describes a Creation that is freely given, in which both the Tigris and the Euphrates “flow out of Eden to water the garden” (2:10) and there is peace. In Atrahasis there is class war:

"Let us face up to our foreman the prefect, he must take off our heavy burden upon us....Now them, call for battle, battle let us join, warfare!" The gods heard his words: they set fire to their tools, they put fire to their spaces, and flame to their workbaskets.

Ultimately, the insurrection of the slave-gods is quelled by the suggestion that human beings be created:

Belet-ili, the midwife, is present...Let her create, then, a human, a man. Let him bear the yoke! Let him bear the yoke! Let man assume the drudgery of the god."

Genesis attacks the myths by asserting that man was not made for toil, rather, toil was an invention of sinful man. [12] It undermines any attempts to build a society on the basis of slave labor. Genesis undercuts the idea that toil is man’s “lot,” if by it one means that toil is man’s by nature, in the order of Creation, rather than by punishment, in the order of the Fall. The technological gaze, which the mythmakers describe as the very reason for man’s existence, is castigated. In the liberal tradition, it is restored, and Adam is described as the one who must toil against a surrounding lack in order to be properly made man.

 

[Domina Nostra]

I don’t have faith in modern medicine. To the extent of our current knowledge, I can objectively prove it works. If some choose to not accept modern medicine, that’s fine. But again, I can provide evidence for its effectiveness in a way and amount that can’t be done with miracles.

To be honest, while I appreciate the level of scrutiny applied to claims of miracles, all the work is still in front of you. To claim proof of miracles from a god that has no objective evidence for his existence in the first place, is placing the carriage in front of the horse.

By "objective", you seem to mean "material" here. But we all accept the existence of immaterial things. For example, math, logic and the human mind are all abstractions that are still real. We can't empirically prove them, but they exist nonetheless.

If God is truly something that is invisible and immaterial, there should be no way to prove he exists using physical instruments and experiments. He simply isn't something that is accessible by those means. But that doesn't mean God doesn't exist.

To use an analogy from the material world, if human beings didn't have the ability to see, we simply would have no access to the existence or purpose of color. It would be meaningless to us. Now most of us do have eyes, and do experience color. But that experience is still not directly translatable to blind people. You can try to communicate what color is to a blind person, but if they were born without eyes and have no sense experience in that regard, its always and only by way of analogy. This obviously doesn't mean that color does not exist for blind people. They just have no way of accessing it.

Its similar with the immaterial or "spiritual" world. If it does exist, we could not experience it through our senses. Only material things are sensible by our sense organs. So how can we ever know it exists and what its like? It has to be communicated through someone or something that has access to both.

In the Catholic tradition miracles are effectively signs posted by the Someone who has access to both the material and immaterial world. It says, "Look over here. You can't explain why this blind person was given sight, or this paralyzed man healed, or this sea was parted, or this person rose from the dead. Now that I have your attention, and now that you know that this is not a normal situation, listen to my message about something you can't see..."

Also from the Catholic perspective, part of the mystery of God is his choice to communicate His existence in a very particular way. He apparently does not want to simply put a sign in the sky, so to speak. However, there are simply countless instances of people experiencing His speaking to them. Some very privately, some very publicly (Red Sea, Ascension, Miracle of the Sun). It's persistent enough and universal enough and sufficiently unexplainable even to some really, really smart people that ignoring it altogether seems to display, at the very least, a lack of healthy curiosity.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Susan from the Parish Council: