December 17, 2012

If the minister is of the Calvinist tradition

It's quite easy. There is an acrostic, TULIP, that sums up the major points of Calvinism:

T - Total Depravity. Humans are unable to turn to God on their own, and are unable even to perform any good works at all. See Romans 3:10-18

There is no one who is righteous, not even one; there is no one who has understanding, there is no one who seeks God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless; there is no one who shows kindness, there is not even one. Their throats are opened graves; they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of vipers is under their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery are in their paths, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

U - Unconditional Election. God chooses those whom he desires to save. This election is without regard to the merit of the individual so chosen. The converse is that God chooses some to be eternally damned, again without regard to the merit of the individual.

L - Limited Atonement. Christ died only for the sins of those he has unconditionally elected.

I - Irresistible Grace. If you are among those chosen to be saved, God's grace is irresistible and you will come to a knowledge of God. In other words, God is like the Borg, "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!"

P - Perseverance of the saints. Once you are saved you cannot lose salvation. Interestingly, this doctrine also embraces the idea of a life-long sanctification process.

One of my professors, a Baptist, summed it up as:

T = We're scum.
U = God chooses which scum goes to heaven and which to hell.
L = Jesus died only for the heaven-bound scum.
I = God doesn't give the heaven-bound scum a choice in the matter.
P = Nor does he allow scumminess to interfere with the process.

This makes a bit from Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience to run through my mind:

Take of these elements all that is fusible,
Melt them all down in a pipkin or crucible,
Set them to simmer and take off the scum
And a Heavy Dragoon is the residuum!

December 4, 2012

Here's my take on Sheldrake

This is from something I wrote in the mid-1990s.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist who brought out his first book, A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Formative Causation, in 1981. Sheldrake developed his ideas further in The Presence of the Past: Morphic Resonance and the Habits of Nature (1988) and The Rebirth of Nature: The Greening of Science and God (1991).

His basic argument is that natural systems, or morphic units, at all levels of complexity -- atoms, molecules, crystals, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, and societies of organisms -- are animated, organized, and coordinated by morphogenic fields, which contain an inherent memory. Natural systems inherit this collective memory from all previous things of their kind by a process called morphic resonance, with the result that patterns of development and behaviour become increasingly habitual through repetition. Sheldrake suggests that there is a continuous spectrum of morphogenic fields, including behavioural fields, mental fields, and social and cultural fields.

Morphogenesis -- literally, the "coming into being" (genesis) of "form" (morphe) -- is something of a mystery. How do complex living organisms arise from much simpler structures such as seeds or eggs? How does an acorn manage to grow into an oak tree, or a fertilized human egg into an adult human being? A striking characteristic of living organisms is the capacity to regenerate, ranging from the healing of wounds to the replacement of lost limbs or tails. Organisms are clearly more than just complex machines: no machine has ever been known to grow spontaneously from a machine egg or to regenerate after damage. Unlike machines, organisms are more than the sum of their parts; there is something within them that is purposive, directing their development toward certain goals.

Although modern mechanistic biology grew up in opposition to vitalism -- the doctrine that living organisms are organized by nonmaterial vital factors -- it has introduced purposive organizing principles of its own, in the form of genetic programs. Genetic programs are sometimes likened to computer programs, but whereas computer programs are designed by intelligent beings, genetic programs are supposed to have been thrown together by chance. Sheldrake has suggested that the misleading concept of genetic programs be abandoned in favor of terms such as "internal representation" or "internal description". Exactly what these representations and descriptions are supposed to be has still to be explained.

To Sheldrake, the role of genes is vastly overrated biologists. The genetic code in the DNA molecules determines the sequence of amino acids in proteins; it does not specify the way the proteins are arranged in cells, cells in tissues, tissues in organs, and organs in organisms. As Sheldrake remarks:

Given the right genes and hence the right proteins, and the right systems by which protein synthesis is controlled, the organism is somehow supposed to assemble itself automatically. This is rather like delivering the right materials to a building site at the right times and expecting a house to grow spontaneously.

The fact that all the cells of an organism have the same genetic code yet somehow behave differently and form tissues and organs of different structures suggests to Sheldrake that some formative influence other than DNA must be shaping the developing organs and limbs. (The general consensus among biologists is that this is determined by "homeobox genes", which are a special sort of gene that controls such things -- and there is considerable experimental evidence for this consensus.)

According to Sheldrake, the development and maintenance of the bodies of organisms are guided by morphogenetic fields. However, the nature of these fields has remained obscure, and they apparently cannot be described in conventional physical and chemical terms. According to Sheldrake, they are a new kind of field so far unknown to physics. They are localized within and around the systems they organize, and contain a kind of collective memory on which each member of the species draws and to which it in turn contributes. The fields themselves therefore evolve.

Each morphic unit has its own characteristic morphogenetic field, nested in that of a higher-level morphic unit which helps to coordinate the arrangement of its parts. For example, the fields of cells contain those of molecules, which contain those of atoms, etc. The inherent memory of these fields explains, for example, why newly synthesized chemical compounds crystallize more readily all over the world the more often they are made.

Before considering other types of morphogenic fields, it is worth examining exactly it is supposed to be. Sheldrake describes them as "fields of information", saying that they are neither a type of matter nor of energy and are detectable only by their effects on material systems. However, if morphogenic fields were completely nonmaterial, that would imply that they were pure nothingness, and it is hard to see how fields of nothingness could possibly have any effect on the material world. In a discussion with physicist David Bohm, Sheldrake does in fact concede that morphogenic fields may have a subtle energy, but not in any physical sense of the term, since morphogenic fields can propagate across space and time and do not fade out noticeably over distance. In this sense morphogenic fields would be a subtler form of energy-substance, too ethereal to be detectable by scientific instruments. Sheldrake also suggests that morphogenic fields may be very closely connected with quantum matter fields. According to Sheldrake and Bohm, the universal quantum field forms the substratum of the physical world and is pulsating with energy and vitality; it amounts to the resurrection of the concept of an ether, a medium of subtle matter pervading all of space.

The reason Sheldrake uses the term "formative causation" to refer to his hypothesis of the causation of form by morphogenic fields is precisely to distinguish it from "energetic causation", the kind of causation brought about by known physical fields such as gravity and electromagnetism. Formative causation is said to impose a spatial order on changes brought about by energetic causation. The dualism Sheldrake introduces with his distinction between energetic and non-energetic causation is all the more remarkable given that Sheldrake criticizes other forms of dualism, such as the idea of a nonmaterial mind acting on a material body (Cartesian dualism), and the idea that the material world is governed by nonmaterial "laws" of nature.

Instinctive behaviour, learning, and memory also defy explanation in mechanistic terms. As Sheldrake remarks, "An enormous gulf of ignorance lies between all these phenomena and the established facts of molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics and neurophysiology." How could purposive instinctive behavior such as the building of webs by spiders or the migrations of swallows ever be explained in terms of DNA and protein synthesis?

According to Sheldrake, habitual and instinctive behavior is organized by behavioral fields, while mental activity, conscious and unconscious, takes place within and through mental fields. Instincts are the behavioral habits of the species and depend on the inheritance of behavioral fields, and with
them a collective memory, from previous members of the species by morphic resonance. The building up of an animal's own habits also depends on morphic resonance. It is possible for habits acquired by some animals to facilitate the acquisition of the same habits by other similar animals, even in the absence of any known means of connection or communication. This explains how after rats have learned a new trick in one place, other rats elsewhere seem to be able to learn it more easily.

Sheldrake suggests that memories are associated with morphogenic fields and that remembering depends on morphic resonance with these fields. He says that individual memory is due to the fact that organisms resonate most strongly with their own past, but that organisms are also influenced by morphic resonance from others of their kind through a sort of pooled memory, similar to the concept of the collective unconscious put forward by Jung.

According to Sheldrake, morphic resonance involves the transfer of information but not of energy. But it is difficult to see how the one can take place without the other, though the type of energy involved may well be supraphysical. Sheldrake, however, rejects the idea of morphic resonance being transmitted through a "morphogenetic ether", saying that "a more satisfactory approach may be to think of the past as pressed up, as it were, against the present, and as potentially present everywhere

Social organization is also explained by Sheldrake. Societies of termites, ants, wasps, and bees can contain thousands or even millions of individual insects. They can build large elaborate nests, exhibit a complex division of labor, and reproduce themselves. Such societies have often been compared to organisms at a higher level of organization, or superorganisms. Studies have shown that termites, for example, can speedily repair damage to their mounds, rebuilding tunnels and arches, working from both sides of the breach that has been made, and meeting up perfectly in the middle, even though the insects are blind.

Sheldrake suggests that such colonies are organized by social fields, embracing all the individuals within them. This would explain the behavior of shoals of fish, flocks of birds, and herds or packs of animals, whose coordination has so far also defied explanation. Social morphic fields can be thought of as coordinating all patterns of social behavior, including human societies. This would throw light on such things as crowd behavior, panics, fashions, crazes, and cults. Social fields are closely allied with cultural fields, which govern the inheritance and transmission of cultural traditions.

According to Sheldrake, then, human beings consist of a physical body, whose shape and structure are organized by a hierarchy of morphogenetic fields, one for every atom, molecule, cell, and organ up to the body as a whole. Our habitual activities are organized by behavioral fields, one for each pattern of behavior, and our mental activity by mental fields, one for each thought or idea. Sheldrake also suggests that our conscious self may be regarded either as the subjective aspect of the morphogenic fields that organize the brain, or as a higher level of our being which interacts with the lower fields and serves as the creative ground through which new fields arise.

However, Sheldrake's fields are subject to question: What are the physical properties of these fields? I dunno. How do these fields pass information? I dunno. Are these fields detectable by any sort of instruments? Apparently not. How are these fields generated? I dunno.

Because of things like this, Sheldrake is regarded as a quack by the overwhelming majority of scientists. If there was one scintilla of hard evidence for the existence of these fields, then Sheldrake's theory might be accepted. The problem is, there is none. You can't just point to mysterious "fields" in order to answer a question.

November 12, 2012

One of my favorite cookbooks is

The Vegeterranean:Italian Vegetarian Cooking by Malu Simoes and Alberto Musacchio. They run a vegetarian hotel/restaurant near Perugia where I once stayed. I was so impressed by the cooking there that I bought their cookbook (which I had to buy from Amazon in the UK).

One of my favorite recipes is Cannelloni di Ricotta con Sugo di Pomodoro (Riccota cannelloni with tomato sauce)

It uses pasta one makes for oneself; a few notes before I start. The first rule of pasta dough is you do not talk about pasta dough -- sorry, that's another set of rules. The actual first rule is the flour should be measured by weight, not volume. The second rule of pasta dough is you cannot overknead it. I am assuming that you have one of those pasta rolling machines. If you don't, you can roll it by hand -- which is a good way of developing the muscles in your forearms.

9 oz (250 gm) all purpose flour
2 whole eggs
3 egg yolks

(Keep the extra egg whites -- if the dough is too dry, you have some liquid to add. If it's too wet, add flour. Yes, that is not too much egg.)

Put the flour in a mound on the table and make a well in the center. Put the rest of the ingredients in the well and start mixing them together. When a proper dough has formed, knead it for about 5 minutes. Wrap it in plastic film (or put into a covered bowl) and let it rest for at least 15 minutes -- half an hour is even better, and 2 hours is not too long. This rest is to allow the flour to absorb the liquid. The dough will be far easier to work with if you rest it.

Assuming you have a pasta machine, cut the dough into two or more pieces and run it through. The first few times through, fold the dough on itself and and keep running through the number 1 setting until you have a smooth dough (three or four times should do). Then increase the setting and run it through each one. Number 6 should probably be the last setting.

If you do not have a pasta machine, take out the rolling pin and start rolling. You want to end up with dough so thin you can see through it. Cut it into strips the length of the baking tin and about 3-4 inches wide.

Put a large pot (I have a four liter one which works well) of water on to boil. Have a largish bowl of ice water next to the stove. (I can easily run through a dozen or two of ice cubes in doing this.) When it has come to the boil, add one to two tablespoons of salt. Put in four to six pieces of pasta at a time to cook, which will take 30 seconds to a minute. After it is cooked, put it in the ice water to shock it. Drain it (I have a cotton tablecloth made of what is essentially thin canvas which does this very well.)

While the dough is resting, make some tomato sauce -- here is a recipe from the same cookbook which is both quick and easy:

28 oz (800 gm) can of peeled or diced tomatoes
1 small carrot, peeled and halved lengthwise
1 small onion, peeled and halved lengthwise
1 small celery stalk, cleaned and halved
1 sprig fresh parsely, rinsed
3 basil leaves, rinsed
2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt to taste

Run the tomatoes through a food mill and discard the seeds. If you do not have a food mill, purée the tomatoes. Combine the ingredients in a pot and simmer over low heat for about 20 minutes, uncovered, stirring occasionally. Taste -- if the sauce is too acidic, add pinches of sodium bicarbonate and simmer for another five minutes.

At this point, you have two choices. You can either fish out the aromatic vegetables and discard. Or you can purée the lot. The first gives you a sauce with a really nice red color. The second gives you an orangish sauce with (IMHO) a better flavor.

While the sauce is simmering and the dough is resting, make the filling:

12 oz (350 gm) ricotta
1 large egg
1/4 tsp black pepper (I assume that, like civilized people, you grind your own)
1/4 tsp nutmeg (also best if you grate your own)
1 oz (30 gm) grated Parmigano Reggiano or Perorino Romano or Asiago or some combination
Zest of 1/2 small lemon

Beat the ricotta with a fork until it is creamy. Add the other ingredients and mix until smooth. (This also makes a nice filling for ravioli or tortellini.)

You are now ready to assemble the cannelloni. Before you start, grate another two ounces of Parmigano Reggiano (or whichever hard cheese you used for the filling) and cut 8 oz fresh mozarella into 1/4-inch (5 mm) cubes.

Using a piping bag or a spoon, place two tablespoons of the filling along the long end of each piece of pasta. Roll up the pasta and place it into the baking tin. Continue doing this until you run out of pasta or filling or space in the baking tin. Dot each cannellono with the mozzarella cubes, ladle the sauce over each of the cannellini, and spread the grated cheese on top.

You can now freeze this (cover it with plastic wrap or foil and add an additional 15 minutes to the cooking time), store it in the fridge for cooking later that day, or cook it right now. When you are ready to cook it, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (180 C) and cook it for half an hour.

I just discovered that someone adapted this recipe for lasagna and posted it on-line at http://divvyupdining.blogspot.com/2012/07/summer-lemon-zest-lasagna-is-that.html

October 16, 2012

I am extremely familiar with the Vatican's arguments against the ordination of women,

and believe that they are a load of dingo's kidneys.

You should know that the document John Paul II relied on was Inter Insigniores, a position paper on women's ordination put out by the Vatican in 1976. Had one of my students given me this, I would have sent it back with comments about shoddy reasoning.

Here is the first paragraph of Inter Insigniores

The Catholic Church has never felt that priestly or episcopal ordination can be validly conferred on women. A few heretical sects in the first centuries, especially Gnostic ones, entrusted the exercise of the priestly ministry to women: This innovation was immediately noted and condemned by the Fathers, who considered it as unnacceptable in the Church. It is true that in the writings of the Fathers, one will find the undeniable influence of prejudices unfavourable to woman, but nevertheless, it should be noted that these prejudices had hardly any influences on their pastoral activity, and still less on their spiritual direction. But over and above these considerations inspired by the spirit of the times, one finds expressed -- especially in the canonical documents of the Antiochan and Egyptian traditions -- this essential reason, namely, that by calling only men to the priestly Order and ministry in its true sense, the Church intends to remain faithful to the type of ordained ministry willed by the Lord Jesus Christ and carefully maintained by the Apostles. If the examples cited by in this document as the testimony of the Church Fathers are at all representative of what tradition has to offer, one must acknowledge that their testimony offers meager support for the claim that the tradition of not ordaining women was motivated primarily by the Church's intention to remain faithful to the will of Christ.

For example, Inter Insignores quotes an early Church document, the Didascalia (circa 225):

For it is not to teach that you women ... are appointed.... For he, God the Lord, Jesus Christ our Teacher, sent us, the Twelve, out to teach the [chosen] people and the pagans. But there were female disciples among us: Mary of Magdala, Mary the daughter of Jacob, and the other Mary; he did not, however, send them out with us to teach the people. For, if it had been necessary that women should teach, then our Teacher would have directed them to instruct along with us.

(Note that the author of the Didiscalia is speaking as if he were one of the Twelve.) However, Inter Insigniores neglects to quote the portion immediately following:

That a woman should baptise, or that one should be baptised by a woman, we do not counsel, for it is a transgression of the commandment, and a great peril to her who baptises and to him who is baptised. For if it were lawful to be baptised by a woman, our Lord and teacher himself would have been baptised by Mary his mother, whereas He was baptised by John, like others of the people. Do not therefore imperil yourselves, brethren and sisters, by acting beside the law of the gospel.

We need only to observe that today one does not regard women as incapable of teaching or baptising. Since we do not admit this inability, we cannot argue from the Didiscalia for evidence against the ability of women to receive priestly ordination.

Incidentally, the statement "It is true that in the writings of the Fathers, one will find the undeniable influence of prejudices unfavourable to woman, but nevertheless, it should be noted that these prejudices had hardly any influences on their pastoral activity, and still less on their spiritual direction" fascinates me. What this seems to say is that the way one thinks does not affect how one acts? If they means this argument seriously, then this is the finest piece of rationalisation since I heard my six-year-old son arguing why he should be allowed to go see Mad Max. This is nonsensical. Moreover, it is untrue.

What is happening here is that the Vatican is (a) admitting that the Fathers were prejudiced and (ii) attempting to deny that this prejudice actually means anything. To take a parallel case, many of the Fathers were also prejudiced against Jews -- John Chyrsostom and Cyril of Alexandria are particularly egregious offenders here -- and it certainly did affect their "pastoral activity", as both Chyrsostom and Cyril issued diatribes against the Jews and drove them from their respective sees of Constantinople and Alexandria.

What I suspect that what the author of Inter Insigniores had in mind was things like Jerome's letters to various women which are filled with concern and advice (note that I do not say good advice, but that is another topic for another time), despite Jerome's often-expressed distain for women in general.

No, the prejudices of of the Fathers certainly did affect their teaching, because they believed that women were, by nature, inferior to men. Thomas Aquinas, in the Summa Theologia Supplement, question 39 article 1 considers the question, "Whether the female sex is an impediment to receiving Orders?". He says that it is, for two reasons. The first is that women are inferior to men ("since it is not possible in the female sex to signify eminence of degree, for a woman is in the state of subjection, it follows that she cannot receive the sacrament of Orders&quot . The Vatican has officially repudiated this argument.

The second reason is:

Further, the crown is required previous to receiving Orders, albeit not for the validity of the sacrament. But the crown or tonsure is not befitting to women according to 1 Cor. 11. Neither therefore is the receiving of Orders.

Now, he admits that "the crown" -- by which he means the tonsure (a ritual shaving of the head) -- is not required for the validity of the sacrament. Indeed, the tonsure is not performed nowadays. Thus, this reason, which was shaky in Aquinas' day, no longer is a real objection. Therefore, the reasons given by one of the foremost theologians vanish into air, into thin air.

Inter Insigniores now tries something sneaky. It says:

The Church's tradition in the matter has thus been so firm in the course of the centuries that the Magisterium has not felt the need to intervene in order to formulate a principle which was not attacked, or to defend a law which was not challenged.

And why was this not challenged? Because everyone "knew" that women were unfit for ordination, because of their inferiority to men. Thus, as I said, the Catholic Church now teaches that women should no longer be seen as inferior to men, while still basing its argument against the ordination of women on that inferiority. This goes beyond shoddy all the way to dishonest.

For another example, which involves bad theology, one of the arguments made is that the priest must "image Christ", and since Christ was a man, then the priest must be a man. Inter Insigniores says

The Christian priesthood is therefore of a sacramental nature: the priest is a sign, the supernatural effectiveness of which comes from the ordination received, but a sign that must be perceptible and which the faithful must be able to recognise with ease. The whole sacramental economy is in fact based upon natural signs, on symbols imprinted on the human psychology: 'Sacramental signs,' says St.Thomas,' represent what they signify by natural resemblance.' The same natural resemblance is required for persons as for things: when Christ's role in the Eucharist is to be expressed sacramentally, there would not be this 'natural resemblance' which must exist between Christ and his minister if the role of Christ were not taken by a man: in such a case it would be difficult to see in the minister the image of Christ. For Christ himself was and remains a man.

Do they really think that the congregation is so stupid that they could not see Christ in a woman priest? Indeed, I daresay that the congregation would find it far more difficult to see Christ in a pedophile.

Second, and more importantly, they are bringing up a disturbing question: If women cannot represent Christ, then how can Christ represent women?

About 1800 years ago, there was a discussion about whether or not Christ was truly human. (If anyone wants me to, I can post on this discussion.) It was determined that Christ is truly human, and the principal argument was advanced by Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote Quod non assumpsit, non redemit -- "That which is not assumed is not redeemed". In other words, if Christ were not truly human, he could not have redeemed humanity. This has been the officially orthodox Christian belief ever since the Council of Chalcedon in 451.

But if Christ is only male, then he cannot have redeemed women. This is completely unacceptable to any Christian. Thus, the Vatican's statement that only men can bear a true image of Christ makes no sense theologically.

Simply put, the official arguments against the ordination of women, as put forth by the Catholic establishment, are crap.

September 23, 2012

I like Steven Erikson's Malazan books

I will warn you that the first book of the Malazan series, Gardens of the Moon, does toss you in medias res, and lets you figure out for yourself what is going on. The glossary at the back of the book and the list of characters in the front of the book are very useful.

Keep track of the characters; for example, in Deadhouse Gates, (which should have the title The Chain of Dogs), there is a very minor character, Toblakai. His real name is Karsa Orlong, and he is a very important character in House of Chains and most of the succeeding novels.

The overall tone of the series is rather grim, although there are some bits which are quite funny; for example, the conversation Bugg has with his lawyer in Reaper's Gale just before he goes bankrupt is a first-rate piece of comic writing. Another bit I liked was Kallor having one of the best boasts in the history of boasts: "I walked this land when the T'lan Imass were but children. I have commanded armies a hundred thousand strong. I have spread the fire of my wrath across entire continents, and sat alone upon tall thrones. Do you grasp the meaning of this?" Caladan Brood immediately shoots back with "Yes. You never learn."

There are no guarantees that anyone survives. For example, Whiskeyjack, the main character in the first book, is (spoiler) killed in the third book. Although being killed in this series does not necessarily prevent a character from reappearing, since (spoiler) Whiskeyjack shows up again in two of the later books. And Toc the Younger (spoiler) manages to get reborn twice, and loses his left eye three times. Hood, the god of death, is killed in Toll the Dogs, but reappears in The Crippled God. When someone says to him "I thought you were dead", Hood replies that being the former god of death gives certain advantages with regard to leaving the land of the dead.

There are also some novels by Ian Esslemont set in the same world at the same time. These novels are canonical, and do give necessary information; for example, we find out what happens to Lasseen in The Return of the Red Guard. Unfortunately, Esslemont is not as good a writer as Erikson (who can write a bit clunkily at times).

There is a unique system of magic, "warrens" from which a magic user can draw power. A character can "ascend" to godhood, sometimes involuntarily. The Crippled God makes Karsa Urlong a demigod (Knight of Chains) without consulting Karsa, and both Karsa and Heboric (a former priest who has accidentally killed his god) realize that the Crippled God is going to come to regret it. Similarly, Ganoes Paran becomes Master of the Deck of Dragons (a Tarot-like card deck which can be used to divine the future and has some aspects of control over the warrens) and doesn't want the job, since he feels that it gives him more power than he can deal with.

One character I should mention is Kruppe, who wants people to underestimate him as a minor magic user and fence who is interested mainly in good food and good wine. He is, in fact, probably the most intelligent character in the novels, and is a friend of the Elder god K'rull (not a worshiper of K'rull, nor K'rull's disciple or priest, but K'rull's friend). At the end of the first book, K'rull owes Kruppe a favor, something which Kruppe is not sure is a good thing or a bad thing. Kruppe also has an annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person.

I really liked it, and am waiting for the next books to come out.

September 21, 2012

That's one of the real problems with Humanae Vitae

Notice that HV does not actually define "contraception". I suspect that this is because any actual definition would shoot holes in Pope Paul's argument. Here's a definition: Contraception is a means of having intercourse without procreation.

The second objection I have is that HV concentrates on the method, and completely ignores intent. I suspect this is because the so-called "NFP" ("Natural Family Planning", the term that the Vatican prefers instead of "rhythm method&quot that the Vatican touts is merely another way of having sexual intercourse and avoiding pregnancy. In other words, the end is exactly the same, the only difference is the method employed. Ignoring intent is bad moral theology.

What is wrong with the Church teaching is that it starts with the view of the Roman stoics and pagan Gnostics that the body is evil, and pleasure is to be mistrusted.

Paul VI implies, although he nowhere says explicitly, that among the "lower animals", sex is only used for procreation. The closest he comes in HV 10: "In relation to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means the knowledge and respect of their functions; human intellect discovers in the power of giving life biological laws which are part of the human person". (The Roman stoic Ulpian said that if you wanted to know what natural behaviour was, look in the barnyard.) I suspect that this is what Paul VI was thinking of. However, this is not necessarily the best place to look. Primates, our closest relatives in nature, use sexual activity in pair bonding, not just procreation. See Alison Jolly's The Evolution of Primate Behavior, Chapter 13. If Pope Paul is going to use a biological argument, he should use good biology.

The view that sexual intercourse is only morally licit if it is being used for procreation was promulgated by people such as Augustine of Hippo, whose own experience of sex was through having illicit love affairs. Augustine thought that he knew what sex was about, but his views were undoubtedly colored by his own experience -- and he actually had not a clue as to the proper function of sex in a marriage. This view led him to say in his De Bono Conjugali that all sexual relations, except for the express purpose of procreation, were at least venially sinful.

Pope Gregory I supported this stand, saying in a letter to Augustine of Canterbury that "even lawful intercourse cannot take place without desire of the flesh ... which can by no means be without sin."

My next objection to HV is that Pope Paul does not have any scriptural basis to his argument, but uses something called "natural law". As Ireneaus of Lyon wrote, "From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law", Against Heresies 4, 15. Thomas Aquinas has a long discussion in his Summa Theologica I-II questions 90-106. Now, there are some things which can be said to be "implanted in the heart of man" -- aversion to rape, murder, incest, child molestation and so on. But birth control pills and condoms are certainly not among those things.

Pope Paul also says some remarkably silly things in HV. For example, he says

Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.

In case the Pope had not noticed, there was a great deal of adultery and fornication going on before HV came out. His second point in this paragraph is that men may lose respect for their wives, seeing them as mere sexual objects. I do not believe that this has happened. For example, it is generally accepted that the great increase in reported incidences of domestic violence is due first, to better reporting techniques, and second, to a social awareness that this is not acceptable behavior.

July 3, 2012

By George, I think you've got it

He didn't change that much, it was the Church that changed.

I am old enough to remember Vatican II, which started when I was a sophomore in high school. It was a time when many of us were filled with idealism and hope. As Wordsworth said about the time of the French Revolution, "Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!" Now, I know what happened to the ideals of the French Revolution -- the red terror, the white terror, the Gironde, etc. The idealism, the hope of that revolution was lost; and the idealism, the hope of the late 60s, early 70s was lost also. I will not speak of the political reasons for losses for people like me -- Viet Nam, Kent State, Watergate; but our idealism and hope was also in our Church.

We felt a spirit saying "Behold! I make all things new!" -- and yes, some of us went overboard. I have never been to a Mass where beer and pretzels were consecrated (we all heard about such things, but no one AFAIK ever actually saw one) but I have been to a Mass concelebrated by a Catholic priest and an Episcopalian priest, and we were expecting full reunion between Rome and Canterbury because each Church would recognise the other as sisters in Christ. "Strive for peace with everyone, and for that holiness without which no one will see the Lord. See that no one be deprived of the grace of God" (Hebrews 11:14-15) Perhaps we were foolish to think such things -- no, not perhaps, we were foolish. We believed that centuries of tradition (note, I am using tradition with a small "t&quot , decades of disdain for "lesser breeds without the law", and reams of polemics could be overcome in a fortnight. Not to mention a thoroughly entrenched Church bureaucracy, which fought tooth and nail for its vision of the Church.


So, what happened? Well, a lot of things, starting with Humanae Vitae
and its repercussions.

June 9, 2012

I'm frustrated as well

Many people say that Catholicism is absurd. Well, it is absurd. Any religion is absurd, but only because our existence is absurd. Why are we here, anyway? Why is there anything at all? Religion is a cautious attempt to respond to mystery with something better than Macbeth's suspicion that it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, if only with Teilhard de Chardin's modest, "there is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth".

Religion is the affirmation in the face of substantial contrary evidence that God is not mad. It is an attempt to face the odd fact that the evolutionary process has produced minds that are capable of comprehending, if just barely, both General Relativity and Quantum Theory, when there was no advantage in our evolutionary past of having such an intellect.

Catholicism at its best is a celebration of that God. At its worst, it is a deadening, soul destroying institution, with too much emphasis on following the rules and not enough joy.

I have been asked what I would change in the Church. What I would like most to change would be to get the hierarchy, especially the Vatican, to accept the inevitability of the freedom of its laity. The hierarchy does not like the laity's assumption of the right to make its own decisions, and its demand that it be persuaded instead of ordered. Indeed, the institutional Church usually works on the implicit assumption that it is still dealing with peasants of centuries ago who did what they were told (usually) without question, without argument, without the demand that it be heard, consulted, persuaded. Many pastors still seem to assume that they have the same influence and power that their role models from a generation or two ago had. Catholics, they believe, should simply do what they are told. (The phrase "pray, pay and obey" is used to describe this attitude.)

It ought to be obvious by now that this is not so. When Church leaders pretend to deny that the souls of the laity are now shaped by a constant exercise of freedom or lament the passing of the good old days when there was a lot less freedom, they have turned their faces against history. Moreover, they miss the point of their own tradition which has believed that virtue is formed by the frequent repetition of free human acts. In any event the days of the supposedly docile peasant are gone and they will never return. The church must adjust to the fact that in the Americas and Europe at any rate, the day of the free laity who make their own decisions after reflecting on the issues, who want to be heard, consulted, persuaded, is the world in which we live and work. In the present milieu, we laity reserve to ourselves the right to say on what terms we will be Catholic. Nothing will change that fact, neither orders from Rome nor hysterical ranting from the tiny fundamentalist Catholic minority.

There are other things I don't like in my Church:

The oligarchic system of government and the love of pomp and splendor among the hierarchy. Jesus's complaints about the Pharisees in Matthew 23:2-7 are appropriate:

The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' seat; so practice and observe whatever they tell you, but not what they do; for they preach, but do not practice. They bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by men; for they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues, and salutations in the market places, and being called rabbi by men.

Seeing, say, a Cardinal in full regalia reminds me of this.

The overemphasis on legalism. The Pharisees did not die out, they became Canon Lawyers. Remind me to give you the official answer to the question "If one has a nosebleed and swallows some of the blood, does that break the Communion Fast?" It is pettifogging at its finest and shows how casuistry got a bad name.

The refusal to even consider the ordination of women. The arguments against this do not hold up to real scutiny, but the previous Pope -- supported by the current Pope -- has attempted to shut off this debate by fiat. As I said, we aren't docile peasants to be ordered.

The overly restrictive rules on divorce and remarriage. I'm sure that it is entirely cynical of me to see any connection between the rigidity of these rules and the fact that they are formulated by a group of unmarried men.

The whole thing about sex -- rules and policies formulated by celibates.

Most of all, their failure to live up to what I see as the call of Christ. What I see all too often is a Church that colludes with the dispossession of the poor or the enslavement of others in the name of patriotism becomes just one more instrument of the state. A Church that blesses oppressive governments in the name of obedience to an authority that denies the authority of conscience makes itself an oppressor as well. A Church that goes mute in the face of massive militarisation practiced in the name of national defense abandons the God of love for the preservation of the civil religion. A Church that preaches the equality of women but does nothing to demonstrate it within its own structures, that proclaims an ontology of equality but insists on an ecclesiology of superiority is out of sync with its best self and dangerously close to repeating the theological errors that underlay centuries of church sanctioned slavery. A Church which sees covering up pedophilia in the clergy is acceptable behavior.

Don't get me wrong, I love the Church. I love the Church for what it is and what it could be. I love the Church as a family of faith. I do not say with John Stuart Mill, "My love for an institution is in proportion to my desire to reform it".

I am, of course, disappointed when I do not find perfect faith, hope, and love in the Church. But that is asking too much. It is, after all, made up entirely of sinners. I do have a right to expect enough faith, hope, and love to sustain me as I stumble on my pilgrim way. Perfect faith, hope, and love will come only at the end, in the great eschatological blow-up. "We are named, and are truly, God's children, but what we shall be has not yet been revealed" (I John 3:2). In the tension between what has been achieved in us and what remains to be accomplished lies the possibility of growth.

So why do I stay? After all, I have had any number of people are saying to me, "You claim to be Catholic, but you really should admit the truth and join the Anglicans". Believe me, there are times I seriously consider it. Incidentally, I want to make clear that my objections are to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Faith is a wholly different matter.

I am a Catholic because that is my Church. It is just as much my Church as it is the Pope's Church. I am not going to change the institution by leaving it. But I do seriously consider leaving.

June 9, 2012

Non-thought in the Vatican

One of the Vatican's main concerns is control of what the clergy and religious (ie, nuns and lay brothers) say and do. Every priest has to take an oath to give both "external assent" and "internal assent" to Vatican teachings. "External assent" means that the priest will teach what he is told to teach; "internal assent" means that he will believe it. Thinking for oneself is distinctly not encouraged.

There is more than just being control freaks here -- although that is a very large part of it. The official line in Catholic thought is that truth is objective and "error has no rights". There is a corollary which presupposes that what the Vatican teaches is by definition "true" (for the Vatican cannot teach falsely), and those who teach that which is not approved by the Vatican are teaching falsely and should be corrected.

Sustaining that attitude requires both ignorance of history and outright deception. After all, if the Church teaches absolute truth, how can the teachings change? Even a cursory examination of the history of doctrine shows that the teachings do change. For example, as late as Pope Benedict XIV's encyclical of 1745, Vix Pervenit, taught that the taking of interest on loans was usury and therefore sinful. The teaching has never been rescinded, but has been quietly dropped.

When I was in graduate school, I wrote a paper on how the Church went from the Council of Trent's "Biblical translations must be based on the Latin Vulgate" to Vatican II's "Biblical teachings must be based on the original languages" without ever contradicting (indeed, quoting from) the previous position papers.

Unfortunately, the quoting from previous position papers is obviously highly selective. Cherry picking quotes is really dishonest. I'm sure that when Pope Benedict was a theology professor, he would have slapped down any student who ignored evidence which did not support his thesis. (If you read Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologia, he starts each article by citing evidence against his thesis; he then answers each one.) However, ignoring contrary evidence is expected in Vatican position papers. The most egregious recent case I can think of was Pope Paul VI's encyclical defending priestly celibacy, Sacerdotalis Caelibatus, which wholly ignores 1 Corinthians 9:5, in which Paul is saying that he has a right to be married. That he chose not to exercise that right is immaterial.

Unfortunately, this sort of thing is, as I said, expected in Vatican position papers. The paper on why women cannot be ordained, Inter Insigniores, is a piece of crap which:

• Admits that one of the main reasons for denying ordination to women has been the attitude that women were inferior to men (see, for example, Aquinas' Summa Theologia, Supplement, question 39 article 1) and says that this argument should be abandoned but then resurrects it without saying it is doing so.

• Relies on the extremely dubious argument that Christ ordained only men to the priesthood. First, even if you grant this argument, one can just as reasonably say that since Christ ordained only Jews to the priesthood, gentiles should not be priests. But the fact is that Christ did not "ordain" anyone. And since the Last Supper was a Passover Seder, and the Seder is a celebration for the family ("You shall tell your children on that day..." -- Exodus 13:8), there were undoubtedly women present.

• Makes the really silly argument that since the priest is supposed to "mirror Christ", the laity would not be able to see Christ in a woman. I daresay that the laity would be far less likely to see Christ in a pedophile. This argument also shows the Vatican's basic contempt for the laity.

Finally, Pope John Paul II attempted to quell discussion in his Ordinatio Sacerdotalis -- "On Priestly Ordination", which can be summed up as "Women cannot be ordained because I say so. Now sit down and shut up!" This argument may work with very small children (but don't count on it), but it only convinces those who believe that every burp which issues from a papal throat is the word of God. They shouldn't expect any adults to buy it.

And that is the problem with much of Vatican teachings: Cherry-picked evidence, contrary evidence ignored, sloppy reasoning, dubious (at best) history, and shutting down discussion by fiat. Now the Vatican is attempting to shut up nuns because their priorities are not the ones the Vatican wants them to promote.

June 9, 2012

What's more, Humanae Vitae is bad moral theology

First, HV does not actually define "contraception". I suspect that this is because any actual definition would shoot holes in Pope Paul's argument. Here's a definition: Contraception is a means of having intercourse without procreation.

The second objection I have is that HV concentrates on the method, and completely ignores intent. I suspect this is because the so-called "NFP" ("Natural Family Planning&quot that the Vatican touts is merely another way of having sexual intercourse and avoiding pregnancy. In other words, the end is exactly the same, the only difference is the method employed.

What is wrong with the Church teaching is that it starts with the view of the Roman stoics and pagan Gnostics that the body is evil, and pleasure is to be mistrusted.

Paul VI implies, although he nowhere says explicitly, that among the "lower animals", sex is only used for procreation. The closest he comes in HV 10: "In relation to the biological processes, responsible parenthood means the knowledge and respect of their functions; human intellect discovers in the power of giving life biological laws which are part of the human person". (The Roman stoic Ulpian said that if you wanted to know what natural behavior was, look in the barnyard.) I suspect that this is what Paul VI was thinking of. However, this is not necessarily the best place to look. Primates, our closest relatives in nature, use sexual activity in pair bonding, not just procreation. See Alison Jolly's The Evolution of Primate Behavior, Chapter 13. If Pope Paul is going to use a biological argument, he should use good biology.

The view that sexual intercourse is only morally licit if it is being used for procreation was promulgated by people such as Augustine of Hippo, whose own experience of sex was through having illicit love affairs. Augustine thought that he knew what sex was about, but his views were undoubtedly colored by his own experience -- and he actually had not a clue as to the proper function of sex in a marriage. This view led him to say in his De Bono Conjugali that sexual relations, except for the express purpose of procreation, were at least venially sinful.

Pope Gregory I supported this stand, saying in a letter to Augustine of Canterbury that "even lawful intercourse cannot take place without desire of the flesh ... which can by no means be without sin."

My next objection to HV is that Pope Paul does not have any scriptural basis to his argument, but uses something called "natural law". As Ireneaus of Lyon wrote, "From the beginning, God had implanted in the heart of man the precepts of the natural law", Against Heresies 4, 15. Thomas Aquinas has a long discussion in his Summa Theologica I-II questions 90-106. Now, there are some things which can be said to be "implanted in the heart of man" -- aversion to rape, murder, incest, child molestation and so on. But birth control pills and condoms are certainly not among those things.

Pope Paul also says some remarkably silly things in HV. For example, he says

Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.

In case the Pope had not noticed, there was a great deal of adultery and fornication going on before HV came out. His second point in this paragraph is that men may lose respect for their wives, seeing them as mere sexual objects. I do not believe that this has happened. For example, it is generally accepted that the great increase in reported incidences of domestic violence is due first, to better reporting techniques, and second, to a social awareness that this is not acceptable behavior.