Also, She Who Runs Off At the Mouth Dani Newsum flips out at the Denver Post bloghouse site in another typical Catholic-bashing screed.
Both seem to have relied on the critique-o-matic for lazy thinkers.
I generally ignore these things, but since these are locals I feel obliged to reply.
For Swain's piece, I dashed off this letter to the editor:
Opinion pieces generally only have space for saying "this is good!" or "this is bad!" Professor Swain's Dec. 6 essay "Sex and the church" proclaims "Catholic sexual ethics: bad!" He claims the restatement of a ban on gays in the priesthood to be wrong-headed, but considering that 80% of abuse victims were adolescent males, that there are rumors of a "Lavender Mafia" blackmailing their way out of disciplinary action, and that a gay male can only with great difficulty proclaim in full sincerity the glories of Christian marriage and its consumating act, such a ban is a very reasonable measure.
Of greater concern is Prof. Swain's casual dismissal of two millennia of Christian ethics in favor of a modish masturbatory ethos. This is no place for theological discussion, but to sum up: Catholics love sex. Since fertility is part of sex, that is also to be loved and not to be shunned, as are the babies who are the marital act's greatest fruit. For further explanation, I suggest reading the last pope's sublime Theology of the Body, or local writer Christopher West's concise summaries of said theology for the average reader.
My response to Dani Newsum's rant:
Ms. Newsum,
Have you tried prayer and fasting?
It might have kept you from mindlessly parroting Reformation-era agitprop, which only distracts from the very real failings of the episcopal hierarchy.
I'll note that one indisputably fatal aspect of modern feminism is the mass extermination of the unwanted unborn. It's sad to say, but thanks to feminists' dehumanizing of the fetus in the past few decades altar boys have actually been safer than a babe in her mother's womb. The libertine ethos which feminism encouraged has also lead to disease and unfathomable personal distress and familial disorder. But now I'm the one distracting the discussion.
Phillip Jenkins, among others, claims that the rate of abuse among Catholic priests is no greater than among any other organization. The problem was magnified because the bishops, like Americans in general, have lost the sense of sin and were treating these pederasts as victims rather than wicked moral agents. They had bought in to the therapeutic ethos, bringing in psychologists when they should have called the police and demanded laborious penances from such sinners. (Though knowing what happens to child molesters in prison, putting them in jail would just have likely led to even more hidden acts of rape and sexual abuse in a Dantesque contrapasso). Clericalism among the laity had not only led them to outsource their call to holiness, but to kowtow to every misguided, heretical, or predatory cleric, and are to an extent complicit in the abuse.
Since the homosexual is now a certified Sinless Victim of the Evil Patriarchy, it's no surprise that you're trying to downplay their misdeeds just as the bishops downplayed those of their homosexual priests. Considering the massive percentage of male victims any claim that this is not a homosexual problem is completely laughable. Perhaps you have not heard reports of the "Lavender Mafia" blackmailing their fellow priests into silence, taking over certain seminaries, screening out any normal men and recruiting more members to its perverted circle. That's one reason behind the recent Apostolic Visitation to American seminaries.
Besides curtailing the Lavenders' power, the ban on gay men is also quite reasonable from a pastoral perspective. A gay man can only with great psychological difficulty proclaim the glories of Christian marriage and its consumating act.
"I can’t think of any institution that is less qualified to address the systemic problem of pedophile priests than the Vatican."
I can! I can! The Denver Post's Bloghouse!
As for the vocation shortage, this is very much due to lazy bishops and actual fifth columnists who want no priests so that the laity can take "control." By this time next year, Denver will have ordained over a dozen seminarians in the past two years.
"Sex. It’s normal - it’s healthy. An institution that requires its members to abstain from sex is not. Jesus didn’t require celibacy from his disciples; and his relationship with Mary Magdalene was one of trust and intimacy, if not actual sex. I’m not talking “Da Vinci Code,” although Dan Brown’s novel is probably closer to the truth than the lies spun by the Catholic Church."
Ms. Newsum, this is sickeningly masturbatory. Do you recall that Jesus Himself condemned even sexual fantasies? He is far more demanding than your flabby libertinism or sixties' pop-theology imagines Him to be, which is why the floor of hell is, as St. John Chrysostom said, paved with the skulls of priests and bishops its burning lampposts.
Where do you attend your No Popery meetings?
Denver Post's Bloghouse is quite dead, a failed Old Media attempt to catch the New Wave, but Ms. Newsum does get on the local PBS station occasionally.
No comments:
Post a Comment