Reproducing my comment from WWWtW:
I like the connection here. For some time, I've viewed nuclear technology as the ultimate exertion of the natural human reality, the ability to uncreate a substance to give man power. It points up what is essentially the human condition in the absence of God. We have no ability to create, only to "creatively destroy." Undirected by reason and the proper telos of man, we can only destroy everything until we ourselves are exhausted, and this is Hell, of course. Fr. Georges Florovsky's essay which is linked below makes a point that I think you will find complementary:
http://jbburnett.com/resources/f...-4-
darkness.pdf
Thinking about human (and angel) nature in that way certainly makes the error in deriving "ought" from "is" pretty obvious.
Michael,
I'm not opposing your view of the bombing but how do you handle the fact of God so requiring dooms of all Canaanites at times by the Jews in war in Pentateuchal times, that Saul is punished with losing the kingship for leaving one of their leaders alive whom Samuel then kills.
The Vatican rather than leaving this problem deep within the Fathers where few read, ought to bring out the OT dooms and note how they differ from Hiroshima in their being ordered by God who used the Jews simply as His right arm which right arm removes people from this earth hourly all over the globe at all times of every year.
Also it would be a much stronger message if the Vatican so agreed with the exact case you are bringing up that they proceed to a very formal declaration condemning those events by name. What often happens in Catholicism is that people like you or Anscombe say such things and you should be able to understand why an intelligent non Catholic might then think it a light opinion if the papacy does not make the effort to say the exact same thing and by name as to the historical events. The question then arises: if it is so important, why does not the papacy note it by name as evil.
And must all roads lead to birth control. If they do. Let a Pope come forward and take the time to do an ex cathedra encyclical on that matter nad not rely on the nebulous authority nature of issues within the ordinary magisterium which are obviously not having much effect except in the people who are dedicated to this issue (often not always celibate) for whatever personal reasons. 29 Popes in a row (from 1589 to 187
supported the sterilization of 9 to 12 year old boys for the castrati system (consequentialism???? and little regard for natural law as you and the post 1930 Popes would define it) which was primarily for the papal choirs for most of that time excepting the early 18th century when opera too wanted them greatly but ended the practice under the force of enlightenment writers prior to the Church doing so 1800 versus 1878 by Pope Leo XIII who unlike the previous 29 Popes did not cooperate with that system and issued a bull stopping it... at which point the castrati who were already employed in 1878 continued on in the Sistine until after 1900 but new ones were barred.
Ergo in light of that and other moments of perhaps papal consequentialism if it was in fact by your lights consequentialism and not 29 Popes differing with Pius XI on the natural law as to sterilization, you might note that we are not masters of non consequentialism ourselves and that makes it harder to make "consequentialism" a hall mark of our vocubulary.
You have given much food for thought here, thank you. Today, we have many more types of weapons and many more "scientific" methods of mass genocide, perhaps threatening the existence of the whole human race, and this all makes the demand for clear thinking all the more urgent.
My father and perhaps hundreds of thousands or more others would have likely have been killed in the Pacific theater of WWII had the A-bombs not been used....that was before I was born. Was there an alternative? Did the leaders in those days have time or inclination to think of an alternative? I don't know. I only know now we DO have the opportunity to think of alternatives to consequential thinking - and the use of scientific technology that coud wipe out the human race.
If I may, two short points to add to Mr. Bannon's thinking process: the castrati were largely a phenomenon of the secular music sphere, operas especially. We think of modern "choir boys" and falsely think of them being prized by the Church for their high voices, but in actuality, teenagers who sang in the Church "choir" were actually in minor orders, on their way to becoming deacons, and with further training, perhaps priests. They were not professionals who needed to prolong a feminine voice. (And, by the way, theat is why there are no female voices in a traditional Catholic schola - women are not on their way to becoming priests.) Secondly, the Church was probably just as powerless to stop that practice as it is to stop abortion today even among so-called self-proclaimed Catholics. It's not really "toleration." I believe you could find official documents against both practices.
Kris R
I'm afraid you are making up a new history of the castrati or you are reading low grade Catholic apologetics that will not be confirmed in well published notable encyclopedias...
http://www.newworldencyclopedia..../entry/
Castrato
Readers are invited to a do an exhaustive net or library check.
It ...the castrati....was primarily Church oriented at first and later dual...opera and Church but opera stopped their acceptance of castrati 78 years prior to the Catholic Church stopping the practice.
Pope Sixtus V in 1589 issued a bull reorganizing the Sistine choir to include two castrati. He did not want women singing in Church as neither did another Pope after him...due to Paul in the epistle saying " I suffer not a woman to speak in church but she is to keep silent." Your contention that Popes could not stop it like abortion is totally false: Pope Leo XIII did stop it and it has no siimilarity to abortion in that the castrati performed in the papal lands and chruches which were in complete control of the Church and which were extensive til the 19th century. Catholic abortions do not occur within Catholic buildings so the comparison is rediculous frankly.
The other ploy of calling them deacons is also in the Catholic apologetics imagination. I've heard it and no where do I run into it in real published books outside of the Catholic apologetics system of minor writers which means it could well be like our white washing of the slavery years.
Provide documentation that castrati composed any sector of the clergy and try to actually give us non catholic encyclopedias which can back that up.
ps...go to new advent and search in their Catholic encycopedia under castrati or castrato.
Nothing....which contradicts your contention that it was a legitimate part of the clergy. Enter Sistine Choir and the entry no where mentions the castrati and the entry is very short and does mention Sixtus V but nowhere mentions the castrati. That encyclopedia is from about 1917 and apparently was not as proud of the castrati practice as your source was.
Bill:
I'm not opposing your view of the bombing but how do you handle the fact of God so requiring dooms of all Canaanites at times by the Jews in war in Pentateuchal times, that Saul is punished with losing the kingship for leaving one of their leaders alive whom Samuel then kills.
Assuming that the OT passages where God orders genocide should be taken literally as history—an assumption which is not de fide, and is in fact rejected by some scholars—what must be said is what Aquinas said: killing that it would be wrong to undertake on our own initiative is not wrong if God commands it. For it is God, not we, who enjoys sovereignty over human life. The question that people always raise for such an answer is of course this: How one could know that God orders such a thing, since it seems to contravene the 5th commandment, which God himself gave? The only answer is that the range of what God could plausibly order before revelation was complete in Christ is wider than afterwards.
And must all roads lead to birth control. If they do. Let a Pope come forward and take the time to do an ex cathedra encyclical on that matter nad not rely on the nebulous authority nature of issues within the ordinary magisterium which are obviously not having much effect except in the people who are dedicated to this issue (often not always celibate) for whatever personal reasons.
Like the present and the previous pope, I dislike the route of formal-definition-with-anathema precisely because it would reinforce the widespread impression that only what is taught by the extraordinary magisterium is irreformable. That is an enormously destructive falsehood. I believe the present and previous popes are right to prefer the course of confirming the ordinary magisterium. The teaching on contraception is not going to change and they have made clear why it is not going to change. That is why I prefer broadening Vatican I's sense of "define" to include formal confirmations of what has been infallibly taught already by the ordinary magisterium. The Vatican could make that broadening clear with a simple revision of canon law. Ad Tuendam Fidem went some distance toward doing that, but not far enough. Going far enough as I've suggested would also take care of the women's-ordination issue.
As for the castrati, the popes were objectively wrong to utilize them. We both know that popes are not impeccable. If any doctrinal hay can be made about the issue, it would be to argue that the popes in question didn't believe that sterilization or mutilation were intrinsically evil. Perhaps they didn't. But so long as they didn't formally teach to that effect, the point is of no doctrinal significance.
Best,
Mike
Mike L
The ordinary magisterium simply is not working and the ex cathedra route is working (no Catholic argues against either the Immaculate Conception nor against the Assumption).
Two years ago the Bishops of the US stated that 94% of Catholics ignored HV and you are looking at that direction of the ordinary magisterium as a solution. It clearly is not. It is too amorphous and subject to change. Just prior to Vatican I a group said that monogenism was universal in the ordinary magisterium and they wanted it declared in Vatican I which did not do it and lo and behold, Germain Grisez in "Way of the Lord Jesus" says it is a possible avenue and Germain Grisez is the most conservative from the US side of things and saw birth control as solved in the OM but apparently not monogenism...lol.
The death penalty was vigorously supported in the ordinary magisterium for a millenium and a half and now is being attacked by the Popes in reality...especially verbally off the books ("cruel" St. Louis 1999 speech by John Paul II).... despite a bungled wording and revised wording in the ccc. which seems to theoretically allow it rarely so that Romans 13:3-4 does not seem foolish. And yet Benedict congradulated the Philippines President at the Vatican when she said they did away with it which contradicts the exact wording of ccc. PS Five Catholic countries in Latin America are in the top eleven murder rate list and only one has the death penalty.
Pan back to 1968 and Humanae Vitae which is ordinary magisterium and was introduced as non infallible and thenceforth flopped because that precise generation had just had an ex cathedra encyclical on the Assumption 14 years prior. They waited for months for Paul VI to come up with something of equal weight since the Assumption is not critical to anyone's life (prior to 1954, millions got along without it being ex cathedra). So that generation who had the inaccurate rythmn method not the present luxury of a more precise NFP ( thousands at that time asking for change were from the Family Life Movement who were practicing rythmn)...that Assumption generation waited months for an ex cathedra encyclical and what they got was HV which page wise is about 7 printed pages and introduced as non infallible....and has some passages that would make an historian faint:
" We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason." Section 12
If his contempararies were particularly capable, how is that almost no one saw that teaching as in harmony with reason? A young Catholic couple with one sick child whose medical bills are so absorbitant as to disallow any more children unless they are to live on welfare must watch a calender for decades to come while a Protestant couple with the exact situation can use sterilization (and both are allowed by the Church to will no more children due to their mountainous medical
ps Griisez holds for polygenism being possible and it would solve how Cain married in the East without saying that he married his sister which later is condemned in the law.
ps 2
You wrote: "If any doctrinal hay can be made about the issue, it would be to argue that the popes in question didn't believe that sterilization or mutilation were intrinsically evil. Perhaps they didn't. But so long as they didn't formally teach to that effect, the point is of no doctrinal significance."
That is a parochial platitude that probably has no cache outside of conservative apologetics since it makes light weight out of the "living magisterium".
It actually does your own case a lot of damage in that countless Popes did not teach about birth control at all but simply enforced if asked what was in the canons. Out of 265 Popes, less than ten seemed to have said a thing and even Paul VI could not find them as we know from his footnote in section 4 of Humanae Vitae of reference 4.
Watch the claim and then notice the footnote only mention one document of the past against birth control...the disproportion is right before one's eyes:
the claim: "In carrying out this mandate, the Church has always issued appropriate documents on the nature of marriage, the correct use of conjugal rights, and the duties of spouses. These documents have been more copious in recent times. (4)"
now the footnote...only line one and a half refers to pre modern documentation:
(4) See Council of Trent Roman Catechism, Part II, ch. 8; Leo XIII, encyc.letter Arcanum: Acta Leonis XIII, 2 (1880), 26-29; Pius XI, encyc.letter Divini illius Magistri: AAS 22 (1930), 58-61; encyc. letter Casti connubii: AAS 22 (1930), 545-546; Pius XII, Address to Italian Medico-Biological Union of St. Luke: Discorsi e radiomessaggi di Pio XII, VI, 191-192; to Italian Association of Catholic Midwives: AAS 43 (1951), 835-854; to the association known as the Family Campaign, and other family associations: AAS 43 (1951), 857-859; to 7th congress of International Society of Hematology: AAS 50 (195, 734-735 [TPS VI, 394-395]; John XXIII, encyc.letter Mater et Magistra: AAS 53 (1961), 446-447 [TPS VII, 330-331]; Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the World of Today, nos. 47-52: AAS 58 (1966), 1067-1074 [TPS XI, 289-295]; Code of Canon Law, canons 1067, 1068 §1, canon 1076, §§1-2.
That does not pass muster. Someone should have done more research but then they would only find what Noonan found as to Popes...Gregory I and Sixtus V...period...the real tradition was canon law which unfortunately just as long supported the slave status of a child born to a slave.
Mike:
That was a great reflection. I agree 100% with it.
Mr. Bannon:
Pope Paul VI did not need to make an ex cathedra pronouncement on the issue of contraception because Pope Pius XI had already made such a pronouncement in the Encyclical Casti Connubi (No. 56). In that encyclical, Pius XI had confirmed in an ex cathedra fashion the previous ordinary magisterial statement of St. Augustine in his interpretation of Onan's sin. Pope Paul VI's Humanae Vitae is to be viewed merely as a re-affirmation of the ex cathedra doctrine of Pius XI and the long held tradition of the ordinary magisterium.
Now, you said: "HV which page wise is about 7 printed pages and introduced as non infallible....and has some passages that would make an historian faint:
"'We believe that our contemporaries are particularly capable of seeing that this teaching is in harmony with human reason.' Section 12
"If his contempararies were particularly capable, how is that almost no one saw that teaching as in harmony with reason?"
I would say that that quote in Section 12 of Humanae Vitae, within its context, clearly Pope Paul VI was merely commenting on the Natural Law. He reflected on how the divinely revealed teaching of the Church on the issue can be arrived at by natural human reason alone by those ignorant of Divine Revelation. He did not say that his contemporaries were going to accept the teaching, but merely that they are capable by human reason alone (aside from Divine revelation) to see the truth of the teaching. This falls in line with the First Vatican Council's declaration (Session 3, Chapter 4, Section 4 and Session 3, Canon 4:1) on how man can come to know God and his laws through natural human reason alone without God revealing himself to them. That is how the Gentiles were capable of knowing right from wrong and how some even arrived at the knowledge of the existence of One God. They arrive at this knowledge by contemplating on the Nature of things. If one contemplated on that one would clearly see that the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage are intended to be indivisible. Any artificial physical division of these is a disorder against nature.
Felix
You are totally incorrect and the evidence is that well published anti birth control theologians like Germain Grisez who says it is solved in the UOM infallibly....even he does not even dare say that Casti C. was ex cathedra.
The recurring problem within Catholicism is that
Popes throughout history have used strong language as for example regarding the Latin Mass...this strong language was followed by schismatic groups claiming the strong language qualified as infallible....this was followed by the group seeing new Popes disagreeing with them as non Popes....this is followed by schism which in God's eyes since it is a spiritual sin is way worse than any sexual sin on earth.
Remember, Aquinas noted that sins get their gravity from the height of the virtue they attack.
If you Felix find yourself holding positions like Casti C. is ex cathedra....and you notice that not one well published conservative theologian agrees with you while those theologians oppose birth control....then that tells you, you are wandering into the dangerous area of schismatic tendencies which are recurrent in the last two hundred years by even clergy who overstate the status of any given document. If you find clergy who agree with you on this, ask yourself why they are unknown and not published by publishers who require standards that accord in this case with well known conservatives who agree with your central point but would not touch your Casti as ex cathedra with a ten foot pole.
Ask Michael if he thinks Casti is ex cathedra.
PS...I gave you a comment on your biblical post at your site.
Bill:
I am not aware of the context of Germain Grisez and other "anti-birth control theologians" that you site. However, it is my understanding that Pope Pius XI's pronouncement fulfills all of the requirements for ex cathedra defined in the First Vatican Council. I quote them below.
Vatican I:
"we teach and define as a divinely revealed dogma that
"when the Roman pontiff speaks EX CATHEDRA,
that is, when,
in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole church, he possesses,
by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, that infallibility which the divine Redeemer willed his church to enjoy in defining doctrine concerning faith or morals. Therefore, such definitions of the Roman pontiff are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable." (First Vatican Council, Session 4, Chapter 4, Section 1)
Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubi, No. 56-57:
"56. Since, therefore, openly departing from the uninterrupted Christian tradition some recently have judged it possible solemnly to declare another doctrine regarding this question, the Catholic Church, to whom God has entrusted the defense of the integrity and purity of morals, standing erect in the midst of the moral ruin which surrounds her, in order that she may preserve the chastity of the nuptial union from being defiled by this foul stain, raises her voice in token of her divine ambassadorship and through Our mouth proclaims anew: any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.
"57. We admonish, therefore, priests who hear confessions and others who have the care of souls,in virtue of Our supreme authority and in Our solicitude for the salvation of souls, not to allow the faithful entrusted to them to err regarding this most grave law of God; much more, that they keep themselves immune from such false opinions, in no way conniving in them. If any confessor or pastor of souls, which may God forbid, lead the faithful entrusted to him into these errors or should at least confirm them by approval or by guilty silence, let him be mindful of the fact that he must render a strict account to God, the Supreme Judge, for the betrayal of his sacred trust, and let him take to himself the words of Christ: 'They are blind and leaders of the blind: and if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit.'" (Casti Conn
Felix
It's simple as pie. You are not showing yourself or the reader the words that preceded Casti Connubii (1930) in the Immaculate Conception encyclical and which are far more intricate and clearly of a higher rank:
"In like manner did we implore the help of the entire heavenly host as we ardently invoked the Paraclete. Accordingly, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, for the honor of the Holy and undivided Trinity, for the glory and adornment of the Virgin Mother of God, for the exaltation of the Catholic Faith, and for the furtherance of the Catholic religion, by the authority of Jesus Christ our Lord, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own: "We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful."[29]
That is to say that Pius XI knew that that was the precedent for infallibility and he avoided using it. John Paul II however did use a shorter version of the IC formula when he after polling all Bishops worldwide declared infallibly against abortion in Evangelium Vitae in section 62 and it went like this:
" Therefore, by the authority which Christ conferred upon Peter and his Successors, in communion with the Bishops-who on various occasions have condemned abortion and who in the aforementioned consultation, albeit dispersed throughout the world, have shown unanimous agreement concerning this doctrine-I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church's Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium. 73"
Both Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae avoided these code words involved because they knew they were not using infallibility. Which is proved by the incident of the dissenting theologians at Washington DC in 1968.
They were at first punished severely by their Bishop but his ruling was put aside by Rome itself who simply asked them to sign a document that the teaching was "authentic Church teaching" which they did knowing that that phrase in dogmatic theology does signify infallible...here is a priest from your side but writing about Torture and watch how he uses the term "authentic magisterial teaching" (same thing) but refers to it as mere...meaning below infallible which is what Rome had the dissenters sign .....Fr. Brian Harrison writes about torture:
" What we have seen is a disappointing magisterial silence during the patristic period, followed by a
CORRECTION:
THIS: "which they did knowing that that phrase in dogmatic theology does signify infallible"
Should read: "which they did knowing that that phrase in dogmatic theology does NOT signify infallible"
CORRECTION 2
Here is the part of Harrison on torture that got cut off...but shows the lighter authority that the dissenters had to sign to rather than infallible..per the Pope:
"What we have seen is a disappointing magisterial silence during the patristic period, followed by a merely authentic magisterial teaching (cf. B1) against confession-extracting torture which prevailed in the late first and early second millennia."
Do you see his use of the word "merely" which means that the dissenters were not signing that it was infallible per Rome's orchestration of what they had to sign.
Bill:
The First Vatican Council's definition and preceding explanatory texts does not require a special solemn set formula or method for Papal ex cathedra pronouncements. The Pope merely has to manifest the intention of binding the whole Church to the teaching and it must be widely publicized. That intention is clearly manifested in Casti Connubii.
Now, in regards to Humanae Vitae. Certainly, Humanae Vitae is not an exercise of the Pope's extraordinary magisterium. It is clearly ordinary or authentic magisterium. So, it would make perfect sense that such scholars would be made to sign something saying "authentic Church teaching," since their dissent was on Pope Paul VI's encyclical which was in the context of a new scientific breakthrough (the pill). But, he was merely re-affirming Pope Pius XI's ex cathedra teaching which was pronounced in a different time under different circumstances in the context of a different method of birth control.
Felix
Name one Popes who has said the simple sentence or phrase: "Casti Connubii was ex cathedra"....or "birth control has been settled infallibly".
You cannot. You have entered your own private world of dogmatics. Some day simply look at the behaviour of recent Popes who seem to have little interest in the fact that few are obeying. If 94% of Catholics were robbing banks each week, the Pope would be touring each diocese in the world to stop it.
Not so on this issue that has consumed some of your lives. Benedict is either researching the early Fathers or listening to a German symphony at Castel Gandalfo or writing on the historical Christ or instructing the world on having a new world authority. If 94% of Catholics are disobeying an ex cathedra encyclical, Benedict is taking it mighty relaxed...lol. One would think he would spend his entire papacy in visitations of every parish in the world so as to stop this 94% phenomenon. Where is the concern? I see nada.
And I saw the same mild interest in John Paul II who also never stated simply that the matter was solved infallibly....and he had all the time in the world to say that simple phrase. Perhaps behind all the talk, these last two Popes are not as sure as you think after they saw Karl Rahner and Haring dissent and note that the matter has not been settled infallibly.
Catholics still have to obey unless their dissent is prayerful, counseled, attended by study due to Lumen Gentium 25's religious submission of mind and will but that passage was supplemented after the Council in moral theology tomes like that of Grisez (page 854...Christian Moral Principles) which allows for dissent that is not rash but the result of prolonged struggle with the issue.
If 94% of Catholics were robbing banks each week, the Pope would be touring each diocese in the world to stop it. Not so on this issue that has consumed some of your lives. Benedict is either researching the early Fathers or listening to a German symphony at Castel Gandalfo or writing on the historical Christ or instructing the world on having a new world authority. If 94% of Catholics are disobeying an ex cathedra encyclical, Benedict is taking it mighty relaxed...lol. One would think he would spend his entire papacy in visitations of every parish in the world so as to stop this 94% phenomenon. Where is the concern? I see nada.
This is where we keep getting separated in opinion. I actually agreed with you regarding the use of infallibility to rein in theologians, because they've decided to abuse their discretion by stretching the objective definition of permissible dissent far beyond the breaking point. But at the individual level, it's clearly a pastoral problem that need not implicate the Magisterium.
I see your point now (finally, although you have a particularly oblique way of making it). You are arguing that the opposition to artificial contraception is the same as numerous previous instances in which schismatics have made something infallible that wasn't actually and that this is likely to end the same way. Consequently, studied dissent is still a possibility.
The problem is in the analogy. While you've trivialized the condemnation of Onan, the problem is that such a trivialization undercuts the moral underpinning for condemning all manner of non-marital sexual acts. If that type of act is not wrong in its kind, then it is difficult to understand why any sort of sexual union cannot be a "marriage," and hence you would in principle be required to illlogically tolerate behavior that is unequivocally subject to moral condemnation in the New Testament (particularly homosexuality and fornication). If one looks solely at the question of whether and how the Magisterium has condemned something, then maybe the condemnation has not been infallible, and maybe it should be in order to rein in the theologians.
But the case of artificial contraception is not like the case of torture. There are not collateral doctrines in the case of torture that end up being entirely unjustifiable if this one is lost. Obviously, even with contraception, it is not true that everyone who violates one, violates the other, or that the violations are equally severe. Indeed, one who violates the prohibition on artificial contraception likely does not perceive this. Torture, on the other hand, is strictly a question of the wise exercise in state power, and while it may have negative consequences in terms of example of general cruelty for the rest of society, there is not the same necessary connection with universal behavior because torture as a governmental act is not something that even can be performed by those who lack the power of the
(cont.)
sword.
In short, you seem to committed the fallacy of hasty generalization in reaching this conclusion. You haven't looked at the specifics of the acts in sufficient detail to equate the two. Moreover, Ratzinger's expressed position is incompatible with your accusation on nonchalance for the same reasons I gave previously regarding the condemnation of homosexuality. See:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curi...-
unions_en.html
Jonathan
You are missing me on birth control but it would be too exhausting to begin again.
Onan is unconnected to sexual acts in general and regards several men risking the non appearance of Christ. Read the Bible cover to cover and you will see that God only kills for sacrilege not sex since the Onan story has two other sexual sins of incest and fornication and the actors of those are not punished even lightly. Had Onan used NFP to avoid all children with Tamar, God still would have struck him dead because his sin which the very sexual Augustine did not notice....was that he was risking the non appearance of the Messiah.
And if one notices that actual and precise meaning of Onan and yet accepts scripture as every human being is supposed to...then there are many condemnations of gay activity and fornication in the same Bible.
To say that not denouncing coitus interruptus in Onan is to open the flood gates to these other acts means that one does not accept scripture at all in the other instances where it condemns fornication and gay activity. Romans chapter one condemns gay activity for both sexes: it should suffice for anyone who prefers the word of God to their own word.
Here is a brief tour of when God kills intimately in the Bible...it is always sacrilege and not sex:
. In Leviticus 10:1-2, Aaron’s sons offer their own incense and fire to the Lord and are killed by fire from the Lord’s prescence for employing unauthorized fire in their sacrifice…but they were offering to the real God so that their sin may well have been unwitting ( Psalm 19:13, “Cleanse me from my unknown faults” ).
Onan’s sin was the risking (probably partly unwitting) of the non-appearance of the Messiah through frustrating childbirth in the only family that was destined to lead to David and then to the Messiah. No sacrilege is greater than this and thus Onan is killed in the most intimate way of all deaths in the Bible: he is killed personally and quickly by God.
In 2 Sam 6, God kills Uzzah for his understandable attempt to steady the ark which was on the verge of tipping but which no one was supposed to touch (Nm 4:15) even though Christ, as to a seemingly similar case, commended David for eating the loaves of proposition, during need, which no man could eat but the priests.
In Joshua 6:19, all gold and silver within Jericho was “sacred to the Lord ” but Achan stole some anyway and was soon stoned to death by God’s order; in Judges 19, the concubine of not an ordinary man but of a Levite priest is raped and killed and 25,000 Benjaminites pay with their lives by the power of God; in I Kings 20:35, a guild prophet tells a companion to strike him and the companion does not and is killed by a lion since the word was from God through a prophet; in 2 Kings 2, forty two children are killed by two she bears for taunting Elisha who again is a prophet as in the preceding case; in I Sam 2, Eli’s sons are killed b
continued.... in I Sam 2, Eli’s sons are killed by God since Eli and his sons took the choice portions of the sacrifices that were meant for God; in I Sam 6, seventy descendants of Jeconiah are slain by God for not participating in greeting the “ark”; also David’s son by Bathsheba is killed by God because David committed adultery with her but David had also killed Uriah her husband who was sacred in a sense because he had honored the “ark” (in a reversal of the above sacrilege by the 70 descendants of Jeconiah). Uriah, one might read between the lines, became sacred to God by not returning home to his wife, saying in 2 Sam 11:11, “ The ark, and Israel and Judah are lodged in tents…can I go home...I will do no such thing.”
In II Sam 24, God is angered at the Jews and allows, (by not frustrating the devil), David to take a census sinfully which leads to the Jews being punished by plague which plague is stopped by building an altar on a threshing floor which could mean that the original Jewish offense was sacral since the replacing of an earthly floor by an altar is the reversal of what happens in sacrilege wherein the sacral gives way to the earthly. Finally in the New Testament in Acts 5, this tradition is continued when God through Peter kills Ananias and his wife Sapphira, not for holding back money from the Church, but for “lying to the Holy Spirit”. Then in Acts 12:23 Herod Agrippa is struck down immediately by an angel of the Lord when he accepts by silence the praise of a crowd which calls him “god”.
And when is the one time in all the gospels that Christ Himself uses violence against human beings? It, as noted earlier, is occasioned by the defiling of His Father’s temple. Once again a sacrilege against the holy is involved and we have no case of Christ whipping prostitutes away from their hangouts in Jerusalem or elsewhere and prostitutes were certainly an occasion of coitus interruptus to the men of Israel.
You are missing me on birth control but it would be too exhausting to begin again.
I think this is because you don't have a point, or at least, because you aren't very good at approaching it if you do. For example...
To say that not denouncing coitus interruptus in Onan is to open the flood gates to these other acts means that one does not accept scripture at all in the other instances where it condemns fornication and gay activity. Romans chapter one condemns gay activity for both sexes: it should suffice for anyone who prefers the word of God to their own word.
That doesn't answer my criticism, and indeed, it doesn't even speak to it. It doesn't matter whether the reason Onan in particular was killed was sacrilege. The question is whether the means he chose were particularly odious, and they were. He probably would have been slain even if he hadn't chosen those means, but that was certainly the most egregious manner he could have chosen to do it. You're not telling me anything I don't know regarding when God kills in Scripture, but again, you're ignoring the specifics of the case in front of you. Hasty generalization appears to be the problem with you; you're always coming up with an overarching explanation and using it to ignore the details.
The reference to "anyone who prefers the word of God to their own word" simply reinforces the problem. Presumably, the preference of Sacred Scripture is also because it makes sense, because there is an explanation for what God says rather than simply divine command. It seems that your concept of theological authority for both the Magisterium and Scripture suffers from the same defect, which is dismissing the need for reasons and explanation in what God does and Who He is.
Jonathan
Bye bye.
Quote From Bill Bannon:
Name one Popes who has said the simple sentence or phrase: "Casti Connubii was ex cathedra"....or "birth control has been settled infallibly". You cannot. You have entered your own private world of dogmatics. Some day simply look at the behaviour of recent Popes who seem to have little interest in the fact that few are obeying. If 94% of Catholics were robbing banks each week, the Pope would be touring each diocese in the world to stop it.
Not so on this issue that has consumed some of your lives. Benedict is either researching the early Fathers or listening to a German symphony at Castel Gandalfo or writing on the historical Christ or instructing the world on having a new world authority. If 94% of Catholics are disobeying an ex cathedra encyclical, Benedict is taking it mighty relaxed...lol.
This is ridiculous. There is widespread dissent on virtually every infallible Church teaching, including those declared more solemnly in councils or Encyclicals exclusively dedicated to them (e.g. Assumption, Immaculate Conception, Perpetual Virginity, Purgatory, Indulgences, etc.). It is not the Pope's job to be scrutinizing and personally directing every single individual person and church born, converted, or built in the Catholic Church. There are over a billion Catholics, millions of parishes, and thousands of dioceses. It is the job of laity, religious, deacons, priests, and bishops in communion with him to teach and defend Church teaching in local areas. The Pope can only do so much on his own.
Also, I disagree completely with your assertion that the modern-day Popes have not cared about this issue or put enough energy on it. Pope Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II, and Benedict XVI have addressed the issue several times. John Paul II wrote the book on Theology of the Body and started a counter-cultural movement on it. The teaching is also included in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This is not including the various statements by the Roman Curia under them with their approval. Perhaps the Popes have not explicitly said the teaching was infallible, but neither have they done so for the dogmas that you have cited as examples. They do not need to, since they have already implied it and it is as clear as pure mountain spring water. They do not need to go around shouting at the top their lungs explicitly that this or that doctrine or dogma is infallible, there are many doctrines that are obviously infallible but they have not explicitly said it was so.
By the way, it is very interesting how you compare things that have absolutely no similarity to each other. First you compare this with the medieval Papal acts on the issue of slavery, the castrati singers, and torture. Next you use the wording of the ex cathedra pronouncements of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and Assumption as some kind of formula set in stone. First of all, the Papal acts rega
(Continued)
First of all, the Papal acts regarding slavery, the castrati singers, and torture are of a lesser degree than that Casti Connubii and Humanae Vitae. You are attempting to compare Papal letter to local churches (e.g. concerning the immorality of torture), a provisional discipline (e.g. determining who inherits slave status, temporarily permitting inquisitors to rarely use enhanced interrogation techniques, and permitting eunuchs to sing in the choir) with that of an official widely publicized address to the entire Christian world about a moral doctrine. There are no comparisons between these. Second of all, in Catholicism there is a hierarchy of teachings. Dogmas are of a more solemn and critical nature because it concerns supernatural mysteries that man can only come to the knowledge of through Public Divine Revelation. A doctrine is of a less solemn nature because it concerns a Divine truth that man can come to the knowledge of through natural human reason. Infallible moral laws mostly fall under this category and therefore they do not require neither is it opportune to employ more solemn wording and more extensive and thorough explanation in their proclamation. There is no need to devote an entire encyclical or even an ecumenical council to proclaiming it. Many common sense moral laws are infallible without anyone saying explicitly "this is infallibly settled."
Felix
You wrote: "Many common sense moral laws are infallible without anyone saying explicitly "this is infallibly settled."
Errrr.....that is because they are clear in scripture...murder,coveting, gluttony....and scripture is inerrant which is the equivalent of infallible. St. Alphonse noted however that there are moral problems that are not clear in scripture and are so unclear that saints have differed on them....slavery and torture and usury.
That is why John Paul used infallibility as to euthanasia because in the bible Samson e.g. seems to have committed suicide at the order of God. Therefore that topic needed infallibility especially with tortured sicknesses of the elderly like end stage renal failure. Ergo in birth control issues likewise such infallibility is needed but truth be known, the Popes who knew Rahner and Haring personally..may not be as sure as you think on the matter no matter what they let lower organs like the CDF state with words like definitive. They will not use the word infallible because the issue is not at that state yet and that is why Rahner and Haring were never punished for dissenting.
TOB was not a book but a series of talks. And you are understating the Inquisition's torture perhaps because you are Spanish. Many of my fellow Irish joke about drinking but they should not since some of their fellow Irish have killed hundreds over the years in the NE cities while driving drunk. Face your peoples' sins ....do not turn them into "enhanced interrogation". The Catholic encyclopedia at new advent has a good article on that matter.
Quote from Bill Bannon:
Jonathan
You are missing me on birth control but it would be too exhausting to begin again.
Onan is unconnected to sexual acts in general and regards several men risking the non appearance of Christ. Read the Bible cover to cover and you will see that God only kills for sacrilege not sex since the Onan story has two other sexual sins of incest and fornication and the actors of those are not punished even lightly. Had Onan used NFP to avoid all children with Tamar, God still would have struck him dead because his sin which the very sexual Augustine did not notice....was that he was risking the non appearance of the Messiah.
I've heard this claim before. Seems reasonable, except that Scripture only explicitly details a sexual act when it is condemning it and Genesis 38:10 says God slew him because he did a detestable thing, not that he slew him in order to raise seed for his brother or raise a future heir. Your comment that it would be the non appearance of the Messiah is absurd given the fact that Jesus' conception was not a natural phenomenon. Also, Judah did not yet inherit "the scepter" until Jacob blessed him at his death bed in Egypt in the 49th Chapter of Genesis. There would have been plenty of opportunities to change that pronouncement. Also, remember that the scepter did not always fall upon the first born son as was the ideal. It could have just as easily fallen on Shelah. Also, given how science tells us today that Onan's method of contraception is about less than 50% effective and pre-ejaculatory sperm can also do the job, he would have eventually impregnated Tamar even while using this method. Besides, Tamar would most likely have known about it and protested it or played the harlot with Judah or Seth. If anything the Sacred Author went to great lengths to show how there was many ways around the law for Tamar to conceive the future Patriarch of the family. Besides, if we take your advice of reading the Bible from "cover to cover" we read in Matthew 3:9 that God is capable for raising children of Abraham from stones. I find it interesting how they put limits on God like that, he need not depend exclusively on Onan's personal choice to fulfill his plan for salvation. As is evident in Deuteronomy 25:7-10, Onan had no obligation to marry Tamar in the first place, though it was the custom.
Also, it was not always the case that God slew people for sacrilege only. He killed humanity in the flood of Noah's time for other sins. He slew Soddom and Ghomorrah for other sins. He slew Ananias and Saphira for fraud. He went ahead and killed many of Israel's war adversaries as well. All sins are interrelated and are all connected one way or the other to the sin of sacrilege.
So fraud was the reason Ananias and Sapphira were killed by God? Final answer....for $50,000???
Let's hear Peter...the Pope....on this: "You have lied not to human beings, but to God."
Yes, because Peter was God's chosen instrument. But, the bottom line is he slew them because they committed fraud against Peter the Apostle who was deserving of respect because of his authority. It was a time when the Church needed such miracles to help prove her authoritative role.
Quote from Bill:
TOB was not a book but a series of talks. And you are understating the Inquisition's torture perhaps because you are Spanish. Many of my fellow Irish joke about drinking but they should not since some of their fellow Irish have killed hundreds over the years in the NE cities while driving drunk. Face your peoples' sins ....do not turn them into "enhanced interrogation". The Catholic encyclopedia at new advent has a good article on that matter.
I've got no problem acknowledging Medieval Spain's transgressions or even the Popes' transgressions. The reason why I chose the wording of "enhanced interrogation techniques" is because Pope Innocent at the time of the inquisition in a papal bull allowed certain torture methods that did not peril life or limb and that the pain not exceed what the person could reasonably bare. Sound familiar? Yes, it was much like how the Bush Administration's lawyers defined torture. Though the difference would be perhaps that Pope Innocent used the word torture when describing the techniques that would be employed perhaps lacking a better word, the Bush Administration did not use the word to describe their techniques. When the principle has been put into practice, the interrogator at times went too far. I agree completely that the techniques used in the inquisition was indeed immoral since they went too far and was illogically used to extract confessions. But, to my limited knowledge Popes who permitted torture did not make a moral judgment on the issue, they merely allowed its use in order to appease overzealous and ruthless Kings and Emperors.
Hmmm. The words....not your comments.... are: " "You have lied not to human beings, but to God." So they were killed for lying to God in lying to Peter which is a sacrilege....just as the children were killed for insulting Elisha, a representative of God.
As for Sodom etc which by the way did involve a sacrilege right prior to the destruction...the intended rape of angels....it is at that point that the angels tell Lot to leave this town and not stay which would have prevented God's killing there since a just family would have been there. In these killings by God for sacrilege, the objective reality is paramount....not the knowledge nor the intentions good or bad of the person killed....since Uzzah had perfect intentions since he steadied the ark to prevent it from tipping and God killed him...likewise but in reverse the Sodom rapists did not intend to rape angels but again the reality of what they were doing was paramount not their intentions. They objectively seen from above as it were... were about to rape angels....and remember the children who were killed for insulting a prophet.
Noah and the Flood is likewise sacrilege since it connects two near chapters of Genesis and we know the sacrilege part from a favorite two verses of John Paul II which he quoted repeatedly in Evangilium Vitae but he edited out the death penalty part every time since he did not like that (see section 40 EV for why he did not like that).
The flood of Noah was brought because man was wreaking "violence on the earth" but unlike any other sin, God connects murder to his image in man right after the Flood and in Genesis 9:6
Gen 9:6 " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."
So in this case God is momentarily likening murder to sacrilege since man is made in His image. Sacrilege is always present.
PS: To clarify what I just said, I did not mean to use the phrase "enhanced interrogation techniques" in a way to minimize the gravity of the sin or to excuse it. I apologize if it came out that way. Just used the phrase because of how Pope Innocent's reasoning is similar to that of the Bush Administration's.
On Popes being innocent of torture, be careful there because an internet priest has said it and Fr. Conner implied it on TV and both are refuted by the Catholic Encyclopedia on Inquisition which states that after Ad Extirpanum, a series of Popes forced secular rulers to burn heretics at the stake or be excommunicated themselves. Here is the part from new advent:
"In this way Gregory IX may be regarded as having had no share either directly or indirectly in the death of condemned heretics. Not so the succeeding popes. In the Bull "Ad exstirpanda" (1252) Innocent IV says:
When those adjudged guilty of heresy have been given up to the civil power by the bishop or his representative, or the Inquisition, the podestà or chief magistrate of the city shall take them at once, and shall, within five days at the most, execute the laws made against them.
Moreover, he directs that this Bull and the corresponding regulations of Frederick II be entered in every city among the municipal statutes under pain of excommunication, which was also visited on those who failed to execute both the papal and the imperial decrees. Nor could any doubt remain as to what civil regulations were meant, for the passages which ordered the burning of impenitent heretics were inserted in the papal decretals from the imperial constitutions "Commissis nobis" and "Inconsutibilem tunicam". The aforesaid Bull "Ad exstirpanda" remained thenceforth a fundamental document of the Inquisition, renewed or reinforced by several popes, Alexander IV (1254-61), Clement IV (1265-6, Nicholas IV (1288-02), Boniface VIII (1294-1303), and others. The civil authorities, therefore, were enjoined by the popes, under pain of excommunication to execute the legal sentences that condemned impenitent heretics to the stake."
This contradicts what even zealous priests are saying because the OT proverb says "Even zeal without knowledge is not good".
Bill:
Yes, I agree with your interpretation that it is sacrilege. As I said earlier, all sins are interrelated in some way just as you said "So in this case God is momentarily likening murder to sacrilege," because we are in his image. So, equally with that reasoning, perverting the sacred conjugal act as Onan did is a sacrilege, since the conjugal act is the image of the Triune God's fruitful love which is why he created us and commanded us to be fruitful and multiply.
Well I'll only urge you to think over sometime that the conjugal act is only the image of fruitful love a minority of the month. Interesting is the fact that the Church permits not the impotent but the known sterile to marry wherein that type of fruitfulness is never present. And she permits the elderly to marry knowing that there are no more miraculous childbirths to the elderly after the Bible closes since within the bible, the elderly pregnancies of eg Sarah were meant to get the Jews ready for an even more stunning miracle...the virgin birth. Once that happened, the elderly pregnancies cease except in rare cases of delayed menopause which in effect means part of the person was not really elderly.
Bill:
Well, I'm not making myself clear enough. I did not mean to say that those Popes are innocent of permitting torture or ordering the execution of heretics. Certainly, they were guilty and went overboard, I do not deny that. That was wrong and completely contrary to the Gospel message. They seem to have also abused the instrument of excommunication, which thankfully is now used more properly.
Now, what I meant to show only is that these documents represent merely fallible political and disciplinary actions of the Popes. They do not concern doctrinal statements of the same caliber as that of Humanae Vitae or Casti Connubii.
Bill:
The Church only condemns "any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life." (Casti Connubii, No. 56). It does not condemn natural phenomenon that are only in God's control.
Now, I am a firm believer in the existence of modern-day miracles. The Church also teaches that they can and do continue. There is nothing to suggest that another miraculous birth from an infertile couple cannot occur.
On that last one we disagree since the purpose of the late life births within the bible was a high purpose and once achieved, they are meant to stop. But...peace.
Pope John XXIII by the way was 4th of 14 children. Not even the conservative voices on the net have 14 children now since in our culture now, it means that you are choosing low income for your children unless you are wealthy enough to send them all to good schools...which would make you a hedge fund operator. Otherwise if you have 14 children now, they are likely to be not rich enough to have 5 children each. The real discussion exists nowhere in the Catholic media.
That's it for me. Peace.
Regarding the Pacific War, please read Max Hastings' "Retribution" and comment here.
All the way through.
Yes, thw decision of unconditional surrender should be reviewed, but doing so, one must have a clear picture of Japan's politrical and cultural character at and before the time of war. Remember, it was a character that took several generations to come to fruition -- and forged absolutely in Manchuia.
Is the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany also to be questioned?
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