Punditry

Last week biology professor P.Z. Myers
desecrated the Eucharist by
first piercing it with a rusty nail (well we pierced Jesus with a nail
before) and then tossed it in a garbage can and covered it with coffee
grounds and a banana peel.

Catholics for the most part have responded
by praying for the man and
committing themselves to doing reparations for the desecration of the
Eucharist. We don’t issue fatwas though we might understandably write
letters to the state university he is employed by for violating their
conduct code. Even if we see him as an attention grabbing jerk he is
still a person in the image of the God he denies and out of love for
him we pray for his conversion.  In fact the first comment on
his blog entry was “May God have mercy on your soul.”

He mocks what we know is sacred out of a
misguided materialist view and our of a faith in science that he wants
to have answer more than it can answer. Dr. Anthony Rizzi who is a
physicist writes in his outstanding book The
Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century about the
tunnel vision that
scientists often develop in their empiro-metric view of the world.
 For them philosophy is not a science at all though they live
by philosophy of scientism.  Out of ignorance they don’t know
that modern science grew out of Christianity and that it was clergy and
Catholic layman that were behind so many discoveries that further
developed the scientific method.  They forget that it is
because of our non-material intellect that we can even do science to
investigate the material world in the first place.

Since Mr. Myers has so little appreciation
of Catholics since we are so stupid and he is so superior I though was
would someone as stupid as myself do to get back at Mr. Myers for this
desecration.  I though hey “An eye for an eye” and all of
that.  So what might a biology professor like P.Z. Myers hold
sacred?  I though obviously a microscope since without it his
field would not have gone very far.   So I asked my readers if
somebody could provide me with a microscope and one person slipped me
one

To show that this device has no power of
its own without a non-material intellect I first pierced it with a
rusty nail, and then desecrated it with holy water since obviously a
practice such as that offends scientism.  I then tossed it in
the trash with a banana peel.

Science did not prevent me from doing any
of this and the microscope and every other tool is just a construct of
our immaterial intellects. So free yourself from scientism  
The scientific method is itself a being of reason and not
provable
by the scientific method.  The
empiro-metric method while quite useful for studying the
intelligibility of the world comes short when it come to ontology.
Ontological question are aided by these branches of science but the
empiro-metric view can’t be used to prove ontological questions.
 The three layers of abstraction Metaphysical, Mathematica,
and Physica are not at odds to each other and we need to return to the
view that theology is the queen of the sciences, though this does not
change the importance of the other sciences.  Faith vs.
science is a silly debate when there is not a “versus” only an “and.”

By the way I do highly recommend The
Science Before Science: A Guide to Thinking in the 21st Century which I
recently read. It is a great introduction both to philosophy and how it
relates to the sciences.  A densely packed read, but highly
worthwhile.

Indulgences, which give Catholics time off Purgatory for good behaviour, are making a comeback under Pope Benedict XVI.

The article gets a little better, but you have to get to the end before anything resembling Church teaching starts to get inadequately explained.

“Look at me I have been automatically
excommunicated and it is reserved to the Holy See to lift it.”

The annoying thing about these faux
ordinations is that they are hard
to parody when they go to so much effort to parody themselves.

Come on tie-dye stoles?  Plus
exactly what part of the ordination ceremony calls for the above
rubric?  

The blankets are a pretty tacky detail.
 Them seem more fitting to send with your kindergarten kid for
nap time.  Seen plenty of pictures of priest being ordained
and don’t think I ever saw one with them prostrate on a blanket.
 

But priestess fashion is not the issue.
 I do feel sad for these deluded women and those who support
them in their delusion.

The Womenpriests organization says
their
ordinations are legitimate because Catholic bishops in good standing
ordained their first members to become female priests and bishops.
Therefore, they argue, the women being ordained can claim apostolic
succession, or direct descent from Jesus’s apostles.

That reminds me of some news I have for
you.  The other day three aliens each from a different race
informed me that I had been specifically selected to be the Ruler of
Earth and Guardian of our Solar System (take that Al Gore!).
 In fact I am now 23rd in line to succeed his Magnificence and
Emperor of the Galaxy.  Though there is some dispute on this
from some of the other alien races so I can’t tell you what aliens
selected me. 

“We are not intimidated. We feel so
strongly.”

Oh you feel strongly?  Excuse me
that defeats all of my arguments relying on Scripture, Sacred Tradition
and the Magisterium.

I’m feeling such joy, I could rise up,”
Lee said in an interview after the ceremony. She pointed out that she
was wearing a cross from Dignity, an organization of gay Catholics.

No one will be surprised to find that
these women don’t just reject this one teaching.  Like I said
last week – scratch a dissident and you will find someone upset about
some area of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.  If
women are being called to the priesthood then why is it only dissident
women that are being called?  Where are the women being
ordained that have a preference for the extraordinary form of the Mass?
 Why do they always have a preference for Hippy stoles and not
beautifully embroidered ones.  Where are the traditionalist
women priestesses who are being called?

Plus how comes the “women’s ordination
movement” doesn’t have any seminaries?  They just ordain women
without any real preparation. Not everyone who enters a real seminary
goes on to discern that they are indeed called to the priesthood, so
why it is that these women are infallible?  Besides it is the
Church that is part of the discernment process and not just an
individual choice no matter how much strongly you feel about it.
 The way the “women’s ordination movement” has approached the
whole thing is more like a show and that they don’t really believe what
they are doing in the first place.

The women did not pledge obedience or
chastity – the promises made by Roman Catholic priests – and one was
introduced to the congregation by her daughter; another by her husband.

Well exactly who would they promise
obedience to other then
themselves.  Would it be the “bishop” from California
“ordained” in Germany who “ordained” them in Boston? On a side note I
am running out of sneer quote ink for this post.   Whatever
happened to having three bishops involved in an ordination as insurance?
 I guess one fake bishop is just as invalid as three fake
bishops.

Though since this whole thing was done in
a Protestant church they should all feel right at home.  If
you have decided that you are above the Pope and the bishops in union
with him and have thrown out Catholic eccelesiology then
congratulations on becoming Protestant.

But the women who participated in the
event, along with the several hundred people who spent nearly three
hours in the sweltering Church of the Covenant, said they rejected the
excommunications and believed that the women had been validly ordained.

Wow I ought to try that some time.
 Officer I reject your ticket and I believe I was driving
under
the speed limit.

Oh well what do I know after all I am only a Newsweek reporter.

I haven’t commented on the whole Professor
P.Z. Myers debacle, but I
might as well add my two cents.  I am sure that when I was an
atheist I would have applauded him for what he is doing because I was
just as ignorant as he is, if not more.

“I have to do something,” he said in
the interview. “I’m not going to
just let this disappear. It’s just so darned weird that they’re
demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to
me. Something will be done. It won’t be gross. It won’t be totally
tasteless, but yeah, I’ll do something that shows this cracker has no
power. This cracker is nothing.”

This only shows that this shows he has
zero understanding of what he is trying to mock.  That he has
no familiarity with the concepts involved or even a basic understanding
of Christianity and theology.  If he did he would know his
little desecration demonstration proves nothing. 

Satan tried to tempt Jesus and his reply
from Deuteronomy was “You shall not put the Lord your God to the Test.”
This is precisely what the professor is attempting.  That
Jesus who would not come down off the Cross will in this case do
something to prevent his being abused in this manner.   That
somehow we can make God appear at will by threatening to do something
evil.

So the professor is trying to do some
materialist’s demonstration that only proves God’s love for us if it
proves anything at all.  That he loves us so much that he will
allow us to abuse him in his sacramental form.  He felt the
weight of our sins in the Agony of the Garden and continues to bear the
weight of our sins that good may prevail. There is Eucharistic
desecration daily as people receive Communion unworthily and even those
of us who believe can receive Communion can do it without the
preparation Communion deserves.  Yet he allows alls of this
and continues to give us graces to bring us out of of spiritual stupor.

As an ex-atheist I can totally understand
P.Z. Myers attitude and ignorance and the only outrage he invokes in me
is a turn to prayer for him. So I won’t be making any death threats,
just life-after-death threats in that I am praying for him and hope to
see him on day in the Beatific Vision.

A poll conducted by social networking
website MySpace has branded the Catholic Church “out of touch” with
young people, just ahead of its World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Of course what most of these poll indicate
is that people think that the Church is out of touch with the morality
of the modern culture, that it is not an echo chamber for current
societal ethics. The only thing the Church needs to be in touch with is
the Holy Spirit.

Though a poll such as this also points out
the work the Church has to do in evangelization since this wrong
perception needs to be addressed to be able to spread the Gospel.
 But no poll ever asks if people are out of touch with the
Catholic Church.

The Church often gets the rap that all it
talks about is sex and that it is fixated on the issue, when the truth
is that it is her distracter that are hung up on this.  The
protesters at World Youth Day are not wearing shirts attacking the
Church for its teaching on helping the poor.  No protest signs
against loving your neighbor.  There is no “1, 2, 3, 4, we
don’t want saints no more.” No all of the protests are about sex in on
form or another.  Whether it is passing out condoms or
homosexual ranting against the Pope calling him a homophobe the topic
is always sex. Scratch a dissenter and you will always find someone
upset about something in the Church’s teaching on sexual morality.

I do think there is something we need for
all World Youth Days.  A massive incinerator at the entrance
points.  That way people can grab all them condoms being given
out and anti-Catholic tracts and immediately dispose of them.
 Let our enemies waste their money so that they will have less
of it.

The penalties callously doled out to Sister Louise Lears – a woman who has dedicated her entire life to serve the Church – is a prime example of the way women are often wrongly treated by the Catholic hierarchy, where dangerous secrecy runs rampant and preserving power in the hands a few ordained men reigns supreme.

A.M.D.G comments

There is so much wrong with this one statement, it’s amazing that anyone could be so far off base.
1. What makes Aisha think that the penalties were “callously” doled out? Lears had every opportunity to recant and repent of her public scandal but refused. She apparently invited the penalties.

2. How is it possible to “serve the Church” while at the same time refusing to believe or assent to what the Church proposes for our belief or discipline?

3. How can Aisha claim that the imposition of these just penalties is a “prime example of the way women are often wrongly treated by the Catholic hierarchy,” when similar interdicts have been applied to “men”? Intellectual honesty demands that one’s assertions be substantiated by truth, however, the claims made by Aisha Taylor are, at best, dishonest and deceptive.

4. She also asserts that the Catholic hierarchy engages in a “dangerous secrecy.” One logically must then ask – If it’s a secret, how does she know about it. If there is some “secrecy” running rampant among a few men in the Vatican, then it’s not much of a “secret” anymore, is it? And if this “secrecy” runs rampant and very few know about, how can she claim that it’s dangerous?

Taylor seems to say that the Catholic hierarchy conspires and schemes so that they can find news ways to keep women in their place, so to speak – they’re trying to keep the woman down! Such an implication speaks volumes – it’s delusional and it seems to demonstrate a unhealthy paranoia or some phobia or hatred of men.

A rational mind can only conclude that Taylor and her cohorts have a talent for combining insulting and accusatory words into calumniating ramblings. And we have only looked at the first sentence! Let’s continue:.

In a weekend article in Newsweek which is totally in the bag for women’s ordination they interviewed a nun who recently left her order and had once written a book supporting women’s ordination.

With dissenters it is always others who are deficient in listening. Not surprisingly it is never they that need to listen to the teaching authority of the Church. The reason the CDF fails to grasp how wonderful their theological positions is because 1) they are not listening and 2) Did you know it was once called the “Holy Inquistion?” Anybody even slightly familiar with the CDF knows that there investigations take years and much time is spent in dialogue to determine if what someone says could be understood in an orthodox manner and for them to fully explain themselves.

In a work published shortly before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope he wrote.

The task of the teaching office is not to oppose thinking, but to ensure that the authority of the answer that was bestowed on us has its say and, thus, to make room for the truth itself to enter. To be given such a task is exciting and dangerous. It requires the humility of submission of listening and obeying. It is a matter not of putting your own ideas in effect, but of keeping a place for what the Other has to say, that Other without whose ever-resnet Word all else drops into the void. The teaching office, properly understood, must be a humble service undertaken to ensure that true theology remains possible and that the answers may thus be heard without which we cannot live aright.

To which dissenters would reply “You’re not listening.”

Last week, controversy erupted when Archbishop John Nienstedt informed St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis that it could not hold a gay pride prayer service in its sanctuary. The service — held for several years in conjunction with the annual Twin Cities Gay Pride festival — celebrates the gay identity.

In response, organizers moved the celebration outside the church. One gay activist attended in what must have struck him as a clown’s outfit, given the occasion — the robes of an archbishop, miter and all. David McCaffrey of the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) condemned what he called Nienstedt’s “reign of homophobic hatred.” In an e-mail to the group’s members, he characterized the archbishop’s decision as “yet another volley of dehumanizing spiritual violence directed at GLBT persons and their families.”

Clearly, there is hatred here. But it is not coming from the Catholic Church. Rather, it’s a tool of those who are trying to compel the church to conform to their personal demands with caricatures and public mockery.

Please read the whole thing. It is rare that you see an article this good in the press and Katherine Kersten goes on to make very good arguments against those who criticize the Archbishop and see now problem with a Catholic parish participating in a gay pride parade. Katherine Kersten who is a Catholic is a consistently good writer and has also done some good coverage when it comes to the Church. Considering how bad the Minneapolis Star Tribune is normally when covering the Church with writers like Frank Rich it is nice to see such a solid column in a very liberal newspaper.

The whole thing about the language used by activists in support of homosexual acts is that their very intention is to force those who disagree into a closet and to be shut up and not heard from. You are a homophobe a the drop of a hat regardless of what you actually think. There is so much name-calling and hyperbole and so little respect of others that you wonder how they managed to forget what it felt like to be dehumanized by jerks with no charity in their hearts and no empathy for those suffering from same-sex attraction.

Via A Shepherd’s Voice.

The Catholic members of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and the Office of International Justice and Peace of the USCCB have jointly produced a Catholic study guide on torture in PDF format called Torture is a moral issue. [Via Christopher at Catholics in the Public Square]

I do like the idea of a study guide format which has some strengths and might be a good format for some future documents. Though while I am glad they have addressed this important topic, I think they could have done it better.

It is a little too touchy-feely when presenting and asking questions such as asking you feel about something. For example: “Do you find it surprising or confusing that Pope John Paul II spoke about finding the face of Christ in every human face?” I don’t know about you but I find this neither surprising or confusing since it is part of the Gospel and has been constantly said throughout the history of the Church. “Whatever you do to the least of me, you do to me.” – is not exactly a secret.

I also found it odd that the United Nations and the Red Cross are referenced more than Church documents addressing torture. Much of the development of doctrine on torture is fairly recent and so you would think they would quote from Gaudium et Spes since it is one of the most important Magisterial statements on torture. They do quote from Gaudium et spes using a paragraph not as germane. The following is what they should have referenced:

Furthermore, whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or wilful self-destruction, whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself; whatever insults human dignity, such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children; as well as disgraceful working conditions, where men are treated as mere tools for profit, rather than as free and responsible persons; all these things and others of their like are infamies indeed. They poison human society, but they do more harm to those who practice them than those who suffer from the injury. Moreover, they are supreme dishonor to the Creator.

At least they correctly referenced Veritatis Splendor where it lists “physical and mental torture” as being intrinsically evil.

I also can’t say I was much impressed by the people they chose to quote in the document. People such as same-sex marriage defender Father Bryan Massingale. Surely their are some orthodox moral theologians they can quote from on the subject?

There are positives though such as starting directly on the question of the dignity of the human person. Yet even though in the summary of this section they write “The end does not justify the means” they never actually addressed this important aspect which really is what all torture apologists effectively deny. The section on loving our enemies is fairly good and is certainly a part of the dialogue about torture. I am reminded of St. Paul writing in the Book of Romans.

No, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Those who justify torture get it backwards and want to eliminate the middle man of doing good and go straight to pouring burning coals on their heads.

This document is like most that come out of the USCCB in that they really need to be edited down since they become so muddled. Clear teaching on why torture is always in every circumstance intrinsically evil gets diffused when the document concentrates more on 9/11 and the war on terror than focusing on torture. Clarity is needed to help those who do not yet understand why torture can never be used and this document does not provide it.