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Saturday, January 06, 2007

Cor ad cor loquacity

Armstrong has weighed in once again:

http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/01/response-to-steve-hays-further-defense.html

Before I delve into the details, in his current response he has posted a picture of Pee Wee Herman, while in his prior response he posted a picture of Alfred Kinsey.

The innuendo is that anyone who opposes the Catholic stance on masturbation or contraception is in the same camp as these two poster boys of sexual iniquity.

Let’s remember that Dave belongs to a denomination which is the world leader in clerical pederasty.

If he chooses to paint with a broad brush, then he will be indelibly stained from head to toe in the process—especially when he’s surfing the web for portraits of Pee Wee Herman and Alfred Kinsey. Clearly someone needs to install a v-chip on his computer.

“We see it all over the place: in liberalized divorce laws, in easy acceptance of abortion in the wake of the sexual revolution (while the Catholic Church never wavered on the issue), in acceptance of contraception (previously regarded as grave evil: Luther and Calvin absolutely despised the sin), starting with the Anglicans in 1930, and now almost universally; now homosexuality is increasingly accepted, etc. Masturbation is just one sexual issue in a tidal wave of compromise in Protestantism considered as a whole.”

Three points:

i) He disregards the liberal/conservative fault-line which runs through Protestantism.

ii) He disregards the fact that his own church is a leonine on paper, but sheepish in practice.

iii) Not to mention the deeply entrenched subculture of sodomy within the Catholic priesthood.

“First of all, it's not my responsibility to also answer your replies to Alan; it's his. Why should I get involved in inter-Protestant squabbles?”

Now he’s backpedaling. Dave posed an accusatorial question which I had already answered. So I pointed him to the preexisting answer.

As soon as I do that, he does an about-face.

“Secondly, you disregard huge portions of my reply, so I am not bound to deal with every jot and tittle of yours.”

No, you’re not bound to deal with everything or anything I say. If, however, you pose a specific question which I specifically answered, then you are being unresponsive to the way in which you yourself framed the issue.

“Even Frank Turk doesn't dare pursue the argument with you. At least he has the sense to know when he is in over his head. But I'm delighted to see that at least he gets it right on this issue. Good for him.”

Yes…well…my informant at the Vatican tells me that CafePress is just a front organization for the Knights of Malta, of which Frank is card-carrying member. I realize that you’re way too far down the food chain to be in the loop, but when Stigmata II comes out this summer, you’ll have a better grasp of Frank’s pivotal role in the advent of the Antichrist.

Don’t be taken in by that family photo album mock-up of his. His “wife” is really a Carmelite nun, while their “children” are rent-a-kids from the off-season cast of Rugrats. I’d love to tell you more, but Cardinal Kasper was speaking off the record.

“Every lawyer learns these tricks, because every lawyer will occasionally have to argue a lost cause and will have to come up with nonsense that is ‘believable’ enough to hoodwink and fool twelve human beings on a jury with illogical and fallacious gibberish.”

I’m glad to see you share the same opinion of Karl Keating and Jonathan Prejean that Svendsen, White, Engwer, and I do.

“No Christian can fully live by the entire code of Christian conduct (or even very well at all).”

This begs the question of what constitutes the Christian code of conduct. The reason that the Catholic church has a history of clerical concubinage, clerical pederasty, and other widespread sexual scandals is that it has an unnatural and extrascriptural code of conduct.

By setting such a surreal, inhumane standard, it inevitably falls into gross iniquity, for the ironical consequence of legalism isn’t greater morality, but greater immorality.

“As I noted: who of us isn't guilty of massive shortcoming with regard to lust or greed or gluttony? But I don't see you constructing fanciful, wishful, desperate apologetics for any of those sins.”

Comparing masturbation to greed begs the question of what is sinful and what is not.

“The Bible I read says stuff like ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me’ and ‘with men it's not possible, but with God, all things are possible.’ Do you have so little faith in God's power and guidance that you are prepared to assert that certain sins are literally unable to be overcome, or so rarely that we can't even apply such passages and grand encouragements to them?”

This is the same Pentecostal pietism as Juan’s. In my reply to him, I distinguished between natural impulses and sinful impulses. I also distinguished between different ways of dealing with them. 1 Cor 7 is a case in point.

“By your reasoning, the growing chastity movement shouldn't even exist. The liberals tell us it is impossible for young people to restrain their sex drives. But there they are: all these heroic teens who haven't bought into the lie of ‘animalism’. Now here you come along in all your supposedly ‘conservative’ and ‘biblical’ glory and try to lie to us that it is virtually impossible to not masturbate, as if God isn't powerful enough to give the grace by which to overcome that sin.”

Several problems:

i) You beg the question by assuming that masturbation is sin. But that’s the very question at issue.

ii) You also beg the question by equating masturbation with fornication. But I’ve distinguished the two.

iii) I’m all for sexual restraint, including premarital abstinence. But sexual restraint needs to be defined in Biblical terms, with Biblical remedies, and not tendentious classifications or Pentecostal pieties.

iv) I also think that many young people should marry at an earlier age. We have a culture that, for economic reasons, postpones marriage—with predictable results.

“If anyone disagrees, you mock them and pillory straw men with reckless abandon.”

Dave, you’re such a fund of unwitting comedy that it would be a crime to let so much raw material go to waste. I'm just attempting to be a responsible citizen in the stewardship of natural comedic resources.

“Since a person isn't conscious at the time; therefore not culpable, it is irrelevant to the discussion.”

It’s a sexual outlet outside of procreation—which is directly relevant to the issue at hand.

“Granted, there is usually an erotic dream that could be said to have derived from cultivated lust, but the thing itself is not a sin. Or do you habitually accuse sleeping people of committing crimes?”

Notice how he completely misses the point of the analogy between masturbation and wet-dreams—as if I’m arguing that masturbation is sinful because wet-dreams are sinful.

“In both cases the man is by himself.”

A man who performs coitus interruptus is “by himself.”

You see the difficulty in debating with a guy who has such an elastic definition of terms, where antonyms become synonyms.

“In pornography or masturbation with internal fantasizing, "women" are used in the abstract as tools. They are still dehumanized and cheapened and lowered to means to an end. Just because a woman isn't really there makes no difference, according to Jesus' principle of lust already occurring in the heart and hate already being the root of murder.”

i) I’ve discussed the problem of pornography elsewhere.

ii) But while we’re on that subject, what does Dave think about all that risqué art you find in Italian churches—much of which was commissioned by the papacy? R-rated Catholic piety.

A Catholic worshiper would have to bring a very dark pair of shades to Mass to keep his mind on the homily.

It’s really rather funny to compare Armstrong’s high-minded talk about “internal fantasizing, ‘women’ are used in the abstract as tools. They are still dehumanized and cheapened and lowered to means to an end. Just because a woman isn't really there makes no difference, according to Jesus' principle of lust already occurring in the heart and hate already being the root of murder. When such a person is later with a real flesh-and-blood woman in a moral situation of married sex, these sins (sadly) often continue to have an effect, because if you have habitually abused the gift and have approached women as objects, useful only for selfish lust and pleasure” with the kind of artwork you find when you take a tour through the historic churches of Rome—not to mention the homoerotic angle to some of the art.

iii) Dave is citing Mt 5 rather than exegeting Mt 5.

“Obviously, you have only the dimmest comprehension of the Catholic sexual teaching that you so delight in mocking and lying about (presumably if you knew how ignorant you were on this score, you wouldn't mock).”

I pose these rhetorical questions to smoke out the duplicity of Catholic teaching on contraception.

“The sin lies in the deliberate separation of the procreative and pleasure functions of sexuality.”

Which is exactly what happens whenever a married couple has sex under conditions, whether natural or artificial, where conception is not in the cards.

“Hear this, and hear it well (for the next time you attempt to seriously analyze serious sexual teaching from the Catholic Church): our teaching is not: ‘every time you have sex it must literally be possible for the women to have a child’.”

“Literally” possible to conceive. As opposed to what? Figuratively possible to conceive?

This is where Catholic moralism instantly crumbles in a heap of pixie dust.

“I don't know, Steve; why don't you tell me why you answered me, then, if you care so little? Why did you write a virtual book in response to Dr. Blosser, who is also a layman like myself?”

Because you paid a visit to my combox, and because some people get their Catholic theology from laymen like you.

“Secondly, it is irrelevant what belief-system I belong to if my argument is true and carries weight.”

There’s a reason why serious Catholic writers submit their writings to an official approval process to receive the imprimatur.

“That's simply a subtle form of the ad hominem argument.”

Read Peter Geach on ad hominem arguments.

“Thirdly, you engage in your customary ignorant, cynical strategy of trying to create an artificial clergy-laity dichotomy which is not taught by the Church.”

To the contrary, it’s the Magisterium which engages in a cynical strategy of letting the laity stick its neck out instead of the Magisterium. That way, if the laity gets its head chopped off, the Magisterium can plead plausible deniability.

The laymen are cannon fodder for the Magisterium. Laymen are the foot soldiers. They assume the intellectual risk of failure. If they successfully storm a city, then the Magisterium will ride in after the fact and take possession. If they are mowed down, the Magisterium escapes without a nick, because it was sitting on a hill, waiting to see how the battle would go.

That strategy avoids the public debacle of Humanae Vitae, when a Pope is imprudent enough to lead the charge, and be shot to pieces in the process.

“Right. You freely admit that the Onan passage deals with contraception, yet you want to claim that contraception isn't frowned upon in the passage?”

i) Yes, because you’re making an illicit move from the specific to the general in the teeth of contextual markers to the contrary.

ii) I’d add that if Gen 38 is the primary prooftext for the sin of contraception and masturbation, then why is it not cited in that connection in Humanae Vitae or the Catechism of the Catholic Church?

Like many converts to Rome, Dave is more Catholic than the Pope.

“Yet your position within your paradigm is far more troublesome and self-contradictory: you stand there as an individualist (that which your Tradition inconsistently glorifies) and expect me to take your word as Gospel Truth and authoritative and immediately profound, when in fact, on this very issue, you differ wildly from Luther and Calvin: the very founders of your overall Protestant system (who agree with me).”

Calvin is not the rule of faith in Calvinism. Scripture is.

“Okay, what am I supposed to do: pretend instead that Christians through the centuries did not condemn masturbation and that suddenly in the 1960s, Christians woke up and figured out that what was previously almost universally despised as sin now is simply biological, morally-neutral, practical activity (just as Protestants did in the 1930s and 1940s with contraception)?”

This is the stereotypically Catholic historical fallacy about a mythical Christian consensus.

The vast majority of Christians never wrote on this or any other subject of Christian morality or theology.

This patently fallacious appeal is really an appeal to a statistical fraction of a fraction of a fraction of Christians over the past 2000 years who were literate and had an institutional platform within the church from which to speak.

Moreover, the historical appeal is self-refuting. A primary reason why the mythical consensus of opinion on this or that issue has unraveled is in direct proportion to increasing rates of literacy and mass education.

As ever more of the laity were in a position to read for themselves, the official gatekeepers could no longer able to say: “We know better—take our word for it.”

As a result, some tradition teaching has survived scrutiny, while other pieces of tradition have been unable to withstand scrutiny.

Speaking of which, let’s take a closer look at ecclesiastical tradition:

“Roman Catholic thinking on this issue [birth control] goes back at least to St. Augustine…Marital intercourse could be justified (using categories of a later period) as an example of the principle of double effect. Intercourse involves the satisfaction of sexual desire, which Augustine did not treat as a good, but it also served the purpose of procreation which was a good. When done with the purpose of procreation marital intercourse was morally justifiable, despite the ‘negative’ result of satisfying sexual desire,” J. S. Feinberg & P. D. Feinberg, Ethics for a Brave New World (CB 1993), 168.

“The next major development came from Thomas Aquinas. While Aquinas rejected Augustine’s suspicion of the physical, his basic position on birth control amounted to the same thing. Coupling the Aristotelian notion of causes with natural law ethics…Aquinas concluded that contraception was outlawed, for it thwarted the natural purpose of the sex act, which is procreation. Engaging in sexual intercourse without the intent of procreation was, therefore, considered sinful. This meant, of course, that intercourse with one’s pregnant wife or with a sterile woman was sinful, because intent to procreate was impossible. In the Middle Ages there was even debate about whether intercourse with one’s wife was lawful of the sole purpose was to satisfy sexual desire so that one would not be tempted to commit adultery. Many thought such a motive made it unlawful,” ibid. 168-69.

Little further change in the Catholic position occurred until the twentieth century. In 1930 Pope Pius XI published the encyclical Casti Conubii…Using Augustinian and Thomistic reasoning and interpretation of Scripture, he condemned contraception. However, he claimed that it does not follow that sexual intercourse is sinful in marriages where, through natural causes, procreation is impossible. Moreover, he stated that though procreation is the primary purpose of marriage, sexual intercourse in marriage also serves such secondary ends as fostering of mutual love and the abatement of lust,” ibid. 169.

Notice two things about this summary:

i) Catholic tradition is not as monolithic as Armstrong presents it when opposing Catholicism to Evangelicalism.

ii) The most traditional parts of tradition are opposed to theological innovations and moderations of the traditional position which Armstrong now takes for granted.

“Right. So all Christians prior to 1930 were utterly mistaken when they opposed contraception, then the lights went on in the profoundly Christian culture of 1930 England and Christians finally got it right.”

I assume he’s alluding to St. Gallup of Aquitaine. And I’m waiting for Armstrong to hyperlink us to the Medieval polling data which supports his conclusion. Is this contained in the Vatican archives or St. Catherine’s monastery?

“And sexually-repressed Catholics who don't even allow priests to marry (so they can get divorced in record numbers and have notoriously-disproportionate dysfunctional families like Protestant pastors do).”

Oh, so the reason for the ban on married clergy is that, if given the chance, Catholic clergy would divorce at the same rate as their Protestant counterparts.

Therefore, the church refuses to countenance married clergy for fear of scandal—because the Catholic priesthood would prove untrustworthy if given the opportunity to fulfill the cultural mandate (Gen 1:28).

With such a vote of confidence from a Catholic epologist, who am I to oppose the priesthood?

“First of all, Fr. Harrison's article was primarily about contraception, not masturbation, with secondary application to the latter.”

Which limits its relevance to the immediate issue at hand.

“Thirdly, neither he nor I nor the Catholic Church invented the scenario whereby the same word in both Hebrew (zerah) and Greek (sperma) could be used both for plant seed and human sperm.”

Which is not the point at issue. At issue his the absurdly free-associative allegorization, as if the same word has the same referent.

Christ is a lion, the devil is a lion; ergo: Christ is the devil. God is a rock, Peter is a rock; ergo, Peter is God.

“To simply dismiss this present interpretation out of hand does insufficient justice to those aspects of the Bible. Protestants are often guilty of this, in their over-emphasis on biblical literalism and ignorance of historical fourfold exegetical methods.”

If you want to treat the parable of the sower as an allegory for the sin of birth control or the sin of masturbation, and use this exercise as a showcase for your brand of hermeneutics, that’s fine with me.

You make my job quite effortless with examples like these. I only have to stand back and point. The laugh-track does the rest.

“I expect to find tons more hidden treasures in the Bible before I die, and I would hope that anyone who loved the Bible would feel the same way.”

You’re mistaking buried treasure for fool’s gold and rhinestones.

“I regarded it as purely a historical question, abstracted from the question of how these Jewish sources came to their conclusions.”

Fine. We have dueling experts. Stalemate.

“Because I'm not required to. Most of you could care less what any Catholic thinks about anything anyway, so why would I waste my time (speaking pragmatically)?”

i) It’s significant that Armstrong is out of touch with standard Catholic scholarship.

ii) I don’t care what a Catholic qua Catholic has to say. But I’m always game for a good argument.

“If he wasn't killed due to contraception, then you have to explain why he was killed.”

Been there, done that.

“Since the penalty for failure of fulfilling the levirate law wasn't death, it makes little sense to assume that he was killed by God because of that.”

Been there, done that. As well as Tom R. As well as Gene Bridges.

“Nice try. If God decided in His providence that someone was to be infertile, then who are we to mess with that by technology and again separate procreation from the sexual act just as we separate sexual pleasure from procreation?”

And if man were meant to fly, God would give him wings. Who are we to mess with our terrestrial mode of locomotion?

The Wright brothers were the Margaret Sangers of aviation.

For 2000 years, Mother Church rode around in a horse-and-buggy. If it’s good enough for Mom, it’s good enough for me!

“This mentality involves the opposite sin of contraception: in one case couples reject God's possible will that they have children, or more than one or two children (the fashionable number today: below zero population growth), in the other, they reject the fact that the man is infertile and try to circumvent the normal course of sexual relations.”

I see. Does Mother Church feel the same way about canes, pacemakers, wheelchairs, prescription glasses, hearing aids, and prosthetics—or do these enjoy a papal dispensation from the damnable taint of mortal sin?

“So (everyone) note what has been done: you assume that I meant an age that my words do not prove (I often, e.g., refer to my ten-year-old son as a ‘little boy’ - it's a relative term).”

Even a ten-year-old is prepubescent. So Armstrong’s usage, both before and after damage control, is subject to the same Freudian premise.

“It stinks any way you look at it and you should be ashamed of sinking to such a level.”

This from a man who associates anyone dissenting from Catholic morality with Pee Wee Herman and Alfred Kinsey.

26 comments:

  1. ROFLOL!!! Beautiful reply. DA is priceless. He obviously thinks to highly of his mishandling of Scripture and google research!! ROFLOL

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  2. Well, you get an E for effort, for sure. I don't know yet if I'll answer again or not (I haven't read it yet, and I have to run right now). If you actually represent my views accurately and put up some cogent arguments, this time, I may do so. But if it's the same old caricature and obfuscation (and thinly-veiled anti-Catholic prejudice) that we saw last time, you can have the last word.

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  3. I'm going to agree that masturbation is wrong, but...

    Let's not forget that Dave belongs to a church whose former Pope stated that it would be a sin for a man to lust after his own wife:

    "Christ did not stress that it is ‘another man’s wife, . . . Even if [a man] looked in this way at the woman who is his wife, he could likewise commit adultery in his heart" (JPII, The Theology of the Body, 159).

    [cough]...(Matthew 23:4)...[cough, cough]

    Let's not also forget that the out-of-control birthrates in highly Catholic Latin America contribute greatly to the poverty there.

    BTW: Trying to get a proof text on sexual sin out of the parable of the sower is classic. Is it any wonder that, up until recently, Protestants rarely took Catholic commentaries on Scripture seriously?

    If this kind of eisegesis weren't so common in R.C. apologetic literature, it might actually be funny.

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  4. Let’s remember that Dave belongs to a denomination which is the world leader in clerical pederasty.

    Alas, the actual truth is not as simple as you would love it to be. Jewish commentator Michael Medved, in his article, "Catholic bashing and pedophile priests" (March 25, 2002) states:

    "An objective analysis of the situation suggests, first, that the Catholic church is no worse than others when it comes to the incidence of child molesters in its ranks. Second, whatever the failings of the Catholic hierarchy in dealing with this appalling problem (and they are legion), those sins pale in comparison to the blatant hypocrisy of the Church's enemies on this issue.

    " . . . In fact, some of those adversaries inadvertently assist the process of placing the scandal in context. Sylvia Demarest, a Texas lawyer, won a $119 million jury award on behalf of former altar boys abused in Dallas, and tracked allegations against priests in every part of the country. She told the Washington Post that her updated list of priests who stand accused of molesting children will reach 1,500 names – representing about 2 percent of the 60,000 priests who have served in the United States since 1984. Even this modest percentage may overstate the problem, since no one would suggest that every member of clergy who stands accused of pedophilia is actually guilty of the crime.

    "Ms. Demarest's numbers conform with estimates by Thomas Plante, a California psychologist at Santa Clara University who treats priests who have molested minors. "The best data we have is that approximately 5 percent of priests have a predilection toward minors," he declared. "That seems consistent with other clergy who are not priests (such as Protestant ministers or rabbis)." Moreover, Plante cites research suggesting that among the general population, 8 percent feel sexually attracted to children – a higher percentage than among priests or other clergy.

    ". . . The Washington Post, an establishment liberal journal with no reason to whitewash the church, approvingly cites Gary Schoener, a psychologist in Minneapolis whose Walk-In Counseling Center has consulted with more than 1,000 victims of sexual abuse by clergy. He also affirms that the percentage of abusers among Catholic priests is no higher than among Protestant ministers."

    See also my survey:

    Scandalous Sexual Misconduct Committed by Protestant Clergy

    http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2005/10/scandalous-sexual-misconduct-committed.html

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  5. Some excerpts from my article:

    Christianity Today (an evangelical Protestant magazine) noted that there were 70 child abuse allegations reported against American Protestant churches each week during the last ten years, a quarter of which were against pastors.

    [to do the math: that is 36,400 allegations in ten years: 3640 against pastors]

    In a 1983 doctoral thesis by Richard Blackmon, 12% of the 300 Protestant clergy surveyed admitted to sexual intercourse with a parishioner.

    17 percent of laywomen said that their own pastor had harassed them.... 10% of Protestant pastors had been sexually active with an adult parishioner...

    ==================

    What did Jesus say about logs in one's own eye?

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  6. Whoops, I goofed in my math: that was 9100 allegations of child abuse against Protestant pastors in the last ten years, or an average of almost 18 every week over that time period.

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  7. This from a man who associates anyone dissenting from Catholic morality with Pee Wee Herman and Alfred Kinsey.

    Very cute, coming from someone who associated ME with NAMBLA (Man-Boy love association):

    "Evidently, Armstrong subscribes to the Freudian thesis of infantile sexuality, which is the basis for organizations like NAMBLA."

    But of course, you had to LIE about my views and come up with a gross caricature and then pretend that I am in this sort of company, premise-wise.

    All I did was post pictures. Pee Wee Herman simply did what you advocate. So there is a connection there insofar as the facts go.

    It's also an indisputable fact that Protrestant denominations' view of sexuality on the whole are far closer to Kinsey's views now than they were fifty years ago. I venture to guess that you would have been either laughed or booted out of any conservative Proitestant seminary in 1940 or 1950 for stating the immoral views that you have on this.

    So my associations are quite appropriate. I don't have to lie about your view to suggest such associations, though clearly it was a bit of tweaking on my part, too. You have to lie and distort my views to associate me with NAMBLA in any way, shape, or form.

    You can't even get your facts right about Catholic clergy sexual scandals over against those of other clergy.

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  8. If he chooses to paint with a broad brush, then he will be indelibly stained from head to toe in the process—especially when he’s surfing the web for portraits of Pee Wee Herman and Alfred Kinsey. Clearly someone needs to install a v-chip on his computer.

    Right. Are you really that computer-illiterate? You could have done the same in five seconds (ten at the most) if you knew how. Let me tell you:

    1. Google
    2. Google web images
    3. "Pee Wee Herman."

    5 seconds maximum. Or is Google an immoral website? If so, then you are implicated, too, since I believe they are in partnership with Blogger.

    1. Google
    2. Google web images
    3. "Alfred Kinsey"

    Another five seconds.

    But if I cruise to a "conservative" Protestant site like "Trialsmog," then I can read wonderful material upholding the moral legitimacy or non-sinfulness or glorious moral neutrality of masturbation!

    Or I can read gaudy details of the former sex life and affair of an atheist when he was a Christian pastor; with everyone gleefully joining in and having a grand old time.

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  9. ME: “We see it all over the place: in liberalized divorce laws, in easy acceptance of abortion in the wake of the sexual revolution (while the Catholic Church never wavered on the issue), in acceptance of contraception (previously regarded as grave evil: Luther and Calvin absolutely despised the sin), starting with the Anglicans in 1930, and now almost universally; now homosexuality is increasingly accepted, etc. Masturbation is just one sexual issue in a tidal wave of compromise in Protestantism considered as a whole.”

    Three points:

    i) He disregards the liberal/conservative fault-line which runs through Protestantism.


    I don't disregard it at all. I'm well aware of the dividing line. I was as a Protestant and I am now, I despised liberal theology and ethics then, wherever it is found, and I continue to do so, and always will.

    On the other hand, the dividing line there is not your pat answer to the issues I raised. Divorce views (and practices) are changing almost as fast in the conservative denominations as in the liberal ones.

    Abortion was sanctioned by conservatives in the late 60s and 70s, not just liberals. Protestants really dropped the ball on that one, and only did better when political conservativism and Reaganism and the firmness of the Catholic Church (and more education on the facts) helped to bring them around.

    Contraception is almost universally-accepted. That is not a liberal-conservative Protestant divide, but an "everyone else vs. the Catholic Church and universal Christian teaching until 1930" divide.

    You yourself compromise on masturbation, and you fancy yourself a "conservative." So does James Dobson and heaven knows who else. That can hardly be blamed mostly on the liberals, either.

    Homosexuality is your best case, but since I was generalizing, this doesn't overthrow my point, since 4 out of 5 of the issues I mentioned are now "controversial" among the good ole boys of Protestant fundamentalism and evangelicalism.

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  10. Yes…well…my informant at the Vatican tells me that CafePress is just a front organization for the Knights of Malta, of which Frank is card-carrying member. I realize that you’re way too far down the food chain to be in the loop, but when Stigmata II comes out this summer, you’ll have a better grasp of Frank’s pivotal role in the advent of the Antichrist.

    Yep, and his "Free Dave Armstrong" t-shirts are just another fooler in the ploy . . . ROFL

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  11. But while we’re on that subject, what does Dave think about all that risqué art you find in Italian churches—much of which was commissioned by the papacy? R-rated Catholic piety.

    I have no problem with nude human bodies portrayed in art. Do you? You would put a halter top on the Venus de Milo and a giant pair of Hanes underwear (purple with pink stripes) on Michelangelo's David? Go right ahead. And you claim that I'm so funny? LOL I'd love to hear you argue this ridiculous position to its logical conclusion (I already have: I saved you the trouble).

    What, do churches have frescoes of copulation or (your favorite non-sin), masturbation? I was unaware, if so. Perhaps you can direct me to an Internet site that features some of this "R-rated" Catholic-commissioned pseudo-pornography.

    I think the real disgrace art-wise was when Calvin and his minions and the more extreme iconoclasts like Carlstadt et al came in and started white-washing church walls, smashing stained -glass windows and decapitating statues, not only of Mary, but of Jesus Christ (not to mention organs, which many of these clowns also considered "idolatrous."

    I've always noted how I thank God that Bach was born in a Lutheran culture rather than in some aesthetically-bankrupt culture like Knox's Scotland or Cromwell's Puritan England. The Lutherans were never anti-art or anti-Christmas like many of the Calvinists were for several hundred years. Good for them. I like a lot of things about Lutheranism. This is one of 'em.

    Give me a Lutheran church over a gymnasium-with-a-bare cross of the Baptists any day, for my money.

    My theology may have been mostly Baptist in the old days but my aesthetics were always at least Lutheran or higher.

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  12. That Dave Armstrong, what a character. This guy is riot. I'm dying laughing!!

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  13. I'm glad you're reveling in merriment and jollity. Laughing is good for the soul. I can assure you that Steve Hays is every bit as funny and ridiculous as y'all think I am, from where we sit (especially the Michelangelo's David-with-Hanes-underwear reductio ad absurdum that flows from his remarks about Catholic art).

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  14. Actually I agree with the Pope that it is possible (and therefore culpable) for a man to "lust after" his own wife in a bad sense. See this docudrama www.imdb.com/title/tt0424938/ about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka (the Canadian "Ken & Barbie" serial killers), for example. Likewise the men who keep magazines like "Readers' Wives" stocked with their home polaroids.

    Where I disagree with the Pope is that he defines "lusting" as "having sex with contraception deliberately and actively added to the body natural", whereas to me (and others), it means rather "using and then discarding". As Hemingway, I think, once said: A man's not paying a prostitute to have sex with him. He's paying her to leave right away afterwards.

    ("Then Amnon hated [Tamar] with intense hatred. In fact, he hated her more than he had loved her." 2 Samuel 13:15)

    Someone like Frank McCourt's feckless father, as depicted in Angela's Ashes, who had contraceptive-less sex with his wife whenever he felt like it - not caring that this left her pregnant with far more babies than he was willing or able to support - fits the normal meaning of "lusting" far more than a Christian couple who use condoms or the Pill (where others might use NFP) to space their four children over eight years instead of six.

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  15. I'm also interested in how the Catholic Church squares its current teaching against contraception (which, since John Paul II, has been based on "Sex is so beautiful that you mustn't degrade it by non-procreative means", as opposed to the older rationale, which was "Sex is so disgusting and carnal that you mustn't degrade yourself with it except for procreation") with the long-established practice of creating castrati such as Farinelli, for the "greater good" of producing beautiful music.

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  16. Actually I agree with the Pope that it is possible (and therefore culpable) for a man to "lust after" his own wife in a bad sense. See this docudrama www.imdb.com/title/tt0424938/ about Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka (the Canadian "Ken & Barbie" serial killers), for example. Likewise the men who keep magazines like "Readers' Wives" stocked with their home polaroids.

    The verse in Matthews which the Pope alludes to is not speaking of lust in some strange, perverted way, but instead to long or desire another woman. Not only that, but the Pope also argues that you commit adultery. How is strongly desiring( lusting) your own wife adultery? If you grant sinful lust how is it adultery? Maybe Dave taught him exegisis using the classic example of the parable in Luke as an allegory dealing with the sin masturbation.

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  17. Since I'm regarded as hilariously funny by so many here, be sure to check out some of my own humor at Steve's expense:

    http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2007/01/steve-hays-rude-prude-dude-attacks-r.html

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  18. > "Abortion was sanctioned by [Protestant] conservatives in the late 60s and 70s, not just liberals. Protestants really dropped the ball on that one, and only did better when political conservativism and Reaganism and the firmness of the Catholic Church (and more education on the facts) helped to bring them around."

    Even if this were true, how would it square with the much-repeated Catholic argument that "You start off by allowing contraception, you inevitably end up allowing abortion?" As Dave correctly notes, the Southern Baptists were initially in favour of Roe v Wade on "religious non-establishment" grounds. (This, I've been told, still represents Jimmy Carter's position.) Since 1973, thanks to Francis Schaffer (senior, that is - the Evangelical one), S-Bapts have become very strongly anti-abortion, to the point of taking a step the RCC has so far baulked at - excommunicating pro-abortion politicians who were nominal members. Yet conservative Protestants have not moved any closer to the Catholic position on contraception during that time. The Pope's prediction in "Humanæ Vitæ" did not come to pass.

    Incidentally, before abominating contraception as a manifestly intrinsic evil akin to murder, can Dave indicate to me the likelihood of a Pope ever appointing a commission of theologians to consider relaxing the ban on abortion, say, or on having ritual temple prostitutes as an adjunct to Sunday worship, and a majority of that Pope's own appointees recommending that the ban be lifted?

    Regarding nudes in church art... Imagine one had a painting of a nude husband (Solomon, say) copulating with his nude wife. Is that licit? The Thomists say, Yes, for it is marital intercourse and is sanctified. But the Molinists say, no, for we cannot be sure that they are not employing some mode of contraception...

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  19. My concern is that Steve here is defining Sola Scriptura too narrowly, in a way that (i) is not supported by the historic Protestant tradit-... er, confessions of the Reformation era, and (ii) gives away too much to Catholic critics.

    The typical Calvinist/ Lutheran/ Baptist definition of Sola Scriptura is that all, and only, those doctrines that either (a) are set out explicitly in Scripture ("Call no man Father", etc), or else (b) may be "proved therefrom" by "good and necessary deduction", are binding dogmas. It is not essential that Scripture, for example, say in as many words "Oh, by the way, from now on the temporary permission fo polygamy and divorce-at-will are revoked" or "there is one God, who has eternally been three Persons". It is enough, to make these binding doctrines, that there's no other way for someone acting in good faith to join the dots. Jesus doesn't (pace my old mate Mark Shea www.mark-shea.com/6.html) say "Divorce is an abomination, but polygamy is still allowed." Rather, the logic of his argument is the opposite: "Even if you divorce your first wife, marrying a second (absent adultery/ desertion, while Wife #1 is still alive) is adultery." Monogamy is taught by implication. Prots are not "relying on Sacred Tradition", in the sense of "recognising the Papacy/ Magisterium as binding and infallible", when they condemn polygamy.

    This doesn't mean one should drink the Scott Hahn kool-aid and start re-regarding every second verse in Leviticus as prefiguring Pope Bernadette I's 2047 enyclical De Quarternitate. It does mean, though, that a series of letters addressing specific pastoral situations two millennia ago remains applicable to Christians today, in covering situations the Prophets and Apostles did not mention (and probably never envisaged). "Good and necessary deduction" is the key.

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  20. Ken Temple, a Protestant regular on my blog, raised an interesting point:

    Is Onan's sin a "one time sin" in Genesis 38:9 or was it an ongoing and continual spilling of his seed (more than one time) for refusing to have any children ? (Because the text says, "But Onan knew the offspring would not be his . . . "

    NIV says, "so whenever he lay with his brother's wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from producing offspring for his brother."

    the "whenever" seems to indicate that is was more than a "one time act" and the emphasis is on refusing to have any children at all.


    This is a fascinating tidbit of information. I was unaware that some translations were like this (since I use the RSV and it reads prima facie as if it is a one-time act). I looked up some others:

    REB (same as NIV): whenever he lay with his brother's wife

    NEB: whenever he slept with his brother's wife

    NRSV: whenever he went in to his brother's wife

    NAB and Confraternity: whenever he had relations

    Moffatt: whenever he went in to his brother's widow

    Goodspeed: whenever he had intercourse

    Amplified: When he cohabited with his brother's widow, he prevented conception

    I'm not sure if this changes the argument on either side or not. It seems to me that it would provide more evidence, however, that his sin was not just failure to keep the levirate law, but contraception as well.

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  21. There are a host of problems in applying Mat. 5 in trying to use it as prohibiting all types of masturbation. For instance, what if a man is away from his wife and he masturbates to thoughts of his wife? On the other hand, what if a man has sex with his wife but fantasizes that she is someone else?

    Really, equating this passage and masturbation is to totally miss the whole point of the passage.

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  22. > " It seems to me that it would provide more evidence, however, that his sin was not just failure to keep the levirate law, but contraception as well."

    Perhaps this is my bias, but I'd tend to interpret it the opposite way - ie, against the Catholic view that a single act of "deliberately-and-actively-rendered-infertile sex" is intrinsically evil, and more towards the Jewish and Protestant view that "having children is a positive blessing, and childlessness is undesirable" (a principle that the levirate rule puts on steroids - ie, that children are *such* a blessing that they even justify a very limited exception to the "adultery => death" law.)

    Contrast, for illustration, the following two situations:

    #1: "Mr and Mrs X, on 8 January 2007, had sexual intercourse and on this particular occasion, they timed their intercourse for an infertile period of Mrs X's cycle, with the intent that she not fall pregnant this time."

    versus

    #2: "Mr and Mrs X have had sexual intercourse many times since they married, years ago; and, on every single occasion, they timed their intercourse for an infertile period of Mrs X's cycle, with the intent that she not fall pregnant at any time."

    While #1 is kosher for post-Humanae Vitae Catholics (if not for those whose authority on the matter is Castii Connubii, my understanding is that #2 would be haram for both sub-denominations of TOTC. Dave, please clarify whether this is correct.

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  23. "It seems to me that it would provide more evidence, however, that his sin was not just failure to keep the levirate law, but contraception as well."

    I believe that Steve and Gene Bridges have already stated that Onan's punishment was not just for not keeping levirate law but also for desiring to destroy his brother's clan.

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  24. Hi Tom,

    While #1 is kosher for post-Humanae Vitae Catholics (if not for those whose authority on the matter is Castii Connubii,

    There is no contradiction between HV and CC. #1 is kosher if there is a sufficiently serious reason to space births (health, emotional well-being, severe financial strain) or to not have further children; otherwise it is sin.

    my understanding is that #2 would be haram for both sub-denominations of TOTC. Dave, please clarify whether this is correct.

    #2 is definitely serious sin, and in fact, a violation of the very marriage vow, where the couple pledges to have children (insofar as it is in their power). If they were both infertile from the outset, then obviously they wouldn't have to worry about indertile periods; it would be a permanent state; hence no planning would be necessaary. And they would not sin in having sex, because you can't prevent what is impossible.

    But if they were fertile, then to always plan to avoid pregnancy is a grave sin, and the anti-child, contraceptive mentality. This cannot be squared with Catholic moral teaching or its conception of the deepest purpose of both marriage and sex.

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  25. DAVE ARMSTRONG SAID:

    [I said] Let’s remember that Dave belongs to a denomination which is the world leader in clerical pederasty.

    “Alas, the actual truth is not as simple as you would love it to be…What did Jesus say about logs in one's own eye?”

    Actually, it’s quite simple. We only have to ask ourselves two questions:

    1.Are homosexuals more likely to seduce teenage boys?

    That question answers itself—unless Armstrong wants to join hands (figuratively speaking, of course) with Andrew Sullivan.

    2.Are homosexuals disproportionately represented in the Catholic priesthood?

    The evidence for that is abundant. Indeed, the Vatican’s new policy, screening out future homosexual ordinands while backing the valid ordination of homosexuals currently in the priesthood, is a backdoor admission of the scale of the problem.

    3.At the same time, it’s difficult to come up with hard numbers given the Vatican’s threat against whistleblowers within the ranks—the pontifical secret:

    http://www.nationalcatholicreporter.org/todaystake/tt081203.htm

    It’s the laity which is most to blame for the Catholic sex scandal, because it’s laymen like Armstrong who downplay the extent of the scandal.

    If they voted with their feet, this wouldn’t be possible. They make it possible by their blind support for a corrupt institution.

    They literally sacrifice their own children to the Moloch of the papacy.

    “You can't even get your facts right about Catholic clergy sexual scandals over against those of other clergy.”

    Aside from my two programmatic questions (see above), notice Dave’s evasive use of statistics—which conflate heterosexual abuse with homosexual abuse.

    “Pee Wee Herman simply did what you advocate.”

    As I recall from news reports at the time, and it was a long time ago, he was caught masturbating in a movie theater.

    To say that’s simply what I advocate is like saying I advocate that married couples copulate in a public park.

    Another example of Armstrong’s moral blindness.
    Continuing:

    ***QUOTE***

    Are you really that computer-illiterate? You could have done the same in five seconds (ten at the most) if you knew how. Let me tell you:

    1. Google

    2. Google web images

    3. "Pee Wee Herman."

    ***END-QUITE***

    And why would any normal man want to Google web images of Pee Wee Herman?

    Sorry, Dave, but I don’t share your viewing habits. If I wanted to Google web images, it would be more along the lines of Sophia Loren, Lena Horne, or Catherine Deneuve.

    “I have no problem with nude human bodies portrayed in art. Do you? You would put a halter top on the Venus de Milo and a giant pair of Hanes underwear (purple with pink stripes) on Michelangelo's David? Go right ahead. And you claim that I'm so funny? LOL I'd love to hear you argue this ridiculous position to its logical conclusion (I already have: I saved you the trouble).”

    i) Notice how Dave has suddenly done a 180 on his original objection. Remember what he said about ““internal fantasizing, ‘women’ are used in the abstract as tools. They are still dehumanized and cheapened and lowered to means to an end. Just because a woman isn't really there makes no difference, according to Jesus' principle of lust already occurring in the heart and hate already being the root of murder. When such a person is later with a real flesh-and-blood woman in a moral situation of married sex, these sins (sadly) often continue to have an effect, because if you have habitually abused the gift and have approached women as objects, useful only for selfish lust and pleasure.”

    Now, however, he defends public nudity as long as it’s “art.” And he defends artistic nudity in the sanctuary.

    The question is not my position on artistic nudity, but the consistency, or lack thereof, of his own stated position.

    ii) Given that Michelangelo was a notorious homosexual whose art reflects his homoerotic fixation, Dave’s illustration is a *queer* choice to prove his point.

    “I'm not sure if this changes the argument on either side or not. It seems to me that it would provide more evidence, however, that his sin was not just failure to keep the levirate law, but contraception as well.”

    The fact that Onan flouted the levirate law at every opportunity doesn’t make a dent in the argument.

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  26. Dave, thanks for clarifying that. I would argue that it supports my interpretation. (I have heard a few more traditionalist Catholics grumbling that, by allowing NFP, HV waters down the arguments set out in CC. As a non-Catholic I accept the possibility that one Papal statement might contradict another.)

    Regarding clerical sex scandals, and without wanting to whitewash whatever pieces of wood are in Prot'sm's own eye (how's that for a mixed metaphor?!), I wrote this at http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2006/12/by-scripture-alone_116761459386808418.html#116800366980487996:

    "Well, while Prots do of course have sex scandals, they don't show anywhere near the same flair for persuading non-perpetrators to go the extra mile to cover up for the perpetrators so as to protect the good name of the institution. Ted Haggard's wife, for example, seems to have had no idea what her husband was up to in his spare time, and I believe the same went for the various Jimmy televangelists who got caught pants-down in the Eighties. Protestant clerical sex scandals tend to be freelance rather than institutional."

    (Sorry for re-posting, but the comboxing caravan moves on faster at Triablogue than almost any other site I've haunted: due in part to Steve's et al's prolificity, and partly to lack of an archives roll... once a post drops off the front page, which is every 48 hours or so, it vanishes into lim... er, the aether unless one has saved the permalink).

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