Repost: "Marriage, a History"

Through most of Western civilization, marriage has been more a matter of money, power and survival than of delicate sentiments. In medieval Europe, everyone from the lord of the manor to the village locals had a say in deciding who should wed. Love was considered an absurdly flimsy reason for a match. Even during the Enlightenment and Victorian eras, adultery and friendship were often more passionate than marriage. These days, we marry for love—and are rewarded with a blistering divorce rate.

Antiquity-Renaissance

What's love got to do with it? In early history, politics and money trumped emotions.

Ancient Greece: Love is a many-splendored (manly) thing. Love is honored—especially between men. In marriage, inheritance is more important than feelings: A woman whose father dies without male heirs can be forced to marry her nearest male relative—even if she has to divorce her husband first.

Rome: Wife-swapping as a career move—Statesman Marcus Porcius Cato divorces his wife and marries her off to his ally Hortensius in order to strengthen family bonds; after Hortensius dies, Cato remarries her.

6th-century Europe: Political polygamy—The Germanic warlord Clothar, despite being a baptized Christian, eventually acquires four wives for strategic reasons, including his dead brother's wife, her sister and the daughter of a captured foreign king.

12th-century Europe: Marriage is good for loving...someone else—Upper-class marriages are often arranged before the couple has met. Aristocrats believe love is incompatible with marriage and can flourish only in adultery.

14th-century Europe: It takes a village—Ordinary people can't choose whom to marry either. The lord of one Black Forest manor decrees in 1344 that all his unmarried tenants—including widows and widowers—marry spouses of his choosing. Elsewhere, peasants wishing to pick a partner must pay a fee.

16th-century Europe: Love's a bore—Any man in love with his wife must be so dull that no one else could love him, writes the French essayist Montaigne.

1600s-Victorian Era

It's a family affair: Married love gains currency, but for intimacy and passion, people still turn to family, lovers and friends.

1690s U.S.: Virginia wasn't always for lovers—Passionate love between husband and wife is considered unseemly: One Virginia colonist describes a woman he knows as "more fond of her husband perhaps than the politeness of the day allows." Protestant ministers warn spouses against loving each other too much, or using endearing nicknames that will undermine husbandly authority.

18th-century Europe: Love gains ground—In England and in the salons of Enlightenment thinkers, married love is gaining credibility. Ladies' debating societies declare that while loveless marriages are regrettable, women must consider money when choosing a partner.

1840, England: Virgin lace—Queen Victoria starts a trend by wearing virginal white, instead of the traditional jeweled wedding gown. Historically thought of as the lustier sex, women are now considered chaste and pure. As a result, many men find it easier to have sex with prostitutes than with their virtuous wives.

Mid 19th-century U.S.: Honeymoon suite for three—Honeymoons replace the older custom of "bridal tours," in which the newly married couple travel after the wedding to visit family who could not attend the ceremony. Even so, many brides bring girlfriends with them on their honeymoons.

20th Century-Today

We worship the couple. Intimacy shrinks to encompass just two, and love becomes the only reason for marriage.

1920s U.S.: How Saturday night began—Dating is the new craze—in restaurants and cars, away from the oversight of family. Popular culture embraces sex, but critics fear that marriage is on the rocks.

1950s U.S.: Marriage is mandatory—Marriage becomes almost universal, and the nuclear family is triumphant: Four out of five people surveyed in 1957 believe that preferring to remain single is "sick," "neurotic" or "immoral."

1970s U.S.: All you need is love?—Self-sufficient women and changing social rules mean marriage is no longer obligatory. Quarreling couples split up rather than make do, and the divorce rate skyrockets.

Today: Bride pride—Marriage is the ultimate expression of love, leading gays and lesbians to seek the right to marry, but also encouraging couples to cohabit until they're sure about their "soul mate." Marriage rates fall—but the fantasy of the perfect wedding is ubiquitous.

Based on research from Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage, by Stephanie Coontz.

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Source: PT Staff, "Marriage, a History," Psychology Today, May 1, 2005, accessed May 28, 2015, https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200505/marriage-history.

Memo: Semiological Exercise Analysis

Memo to analyze this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOJgDW0gPI) as an example of semiological exercise, the swapping and rearranging of signs and sign systems unique to humans that allows for fictional worlds.

What are its further implications in light of semioethics? What are its assumptions? What does it say and leave out?

Nietzsche on Modern Marriage and Romance

This sounds like bigoted, misogynistic conservatism to modern ears:

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The things that make an institution into an institution are despised, hated, rejected: people think that they are in danger of a new sort of slavery when the word 'authority' is so much as spoken out loud. The value-instincts of our politicians, our political parties, are so decadent that they instinctively prefer things that disintegrate, that accelerate the end ... Witness modern marriage. It is clear that modern marriage is completely irrational: but this is an objection to modernity, not to marriage. The rationality of marriage lay in the fact that the husband has sole juridical responsibility: this gave marriage a centre [sic] of balance, while today it limps on both legs. The rationality of marriage lay in its principled indissolubility, which gave it an accent that knew how to be heard above the accidents of feeling, passion, and the distractions of the moment. The rationality also lay in the family's responsibility for choosing the spouse. With the growing indulgence of love matches, the whole basis of marriage has been eliminated, the very thing that made it an institution in the first place. You never, ever base an institution on an idiosyncrasy, and, as I have said, you do not base marriage on 'love',—you base it on the sex drive; on the drive for property (woman and child as property); on the drive to dominate that keeps organizing the family (the smallest unit of domination), that needs children and heirs in order to maintain (even physiologically) the measure of power, influence, and wealth that has been achieved, in order to prepare for long tasks, for a solidarity of instincts between the centuries. Marriage as an institution already affirms the greatest, most enduring form of organization: when society cannot work as a whole to extend an affirmation to the most distant generations, marriage has stopped making sense.—Modern marriage has lost its meaning,—consequently, it is being abolished.

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Source: Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in The Anti-Christ, Ecee Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, ed. by Aaron Ridley and Judith Norman, trans. by Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 215.

Distinction: Unworthy vs. Incapable

There is a difference between being unworthy of something and incapable of something. Unworthiness refers to being; incapacity refers to doing or activity. And although activity follows being (function follows form), one has to be careful in how this concept is applied.

For example, we are unworthy of salvation before God because we have sinned. Nevertheless, even if we hadn't sinned, as finite creatures we still could not save ourselves without God's grace because salvation transcends the capacity of finite power; it requires the infinite absolutely. Sin, on the other hand, makes us in a certain sense further incapable of salvation because it makes us unworthy by willfully rejecting the only thing which could save us, namely, God's grace.

Sometimes the Church makes this distinction. For example, She tells us that two persons of the same sex are incapable of marrying each other through the Sacrament of Matrimony. She tells us that women are incapable of ordination, and at one point, She decreed that women were incapable of singing in the choir because it is a liturgical function and hence reserved for men. In none of these instances does the Church decree that such people are unworthy so as to shame them. In a certain sense, all are unworthy of the grace of marriage, priesthood, and contributing to the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. But most people take the notion of unworthiness as a stimulus for shame rather than humility. 

This stimulus to shame rather than humility is fueled by a lack of healthy self-integration usually caused by childhood experiences in being raised poorly. Shame is fueled by falsehoods, pain, and hatred. Humility is fueled by truth, consolation, and love. Humility can feel painful, but it is a very different kind of pain than the pain that accompanies shame. The pain of humility is the pain of subduing one's pride, of resisting the allure of falsehood. The pain of shame is utterly destructive and usually leads to a form of overcompensation: either a person acts "nicely" and allows himself to be walked over without asserting healthy boundaries so as to avoid further pain; or the person acts like a jerk, stomping over others to give himself a false sense of power. Both reactions are extremes that try to hide from the simple presence of shame.

Hence when a person is told they "can't" do something, usually due to the above circumstances, this denial is used as a way to shame the person, confusing the notions of unworthiness and incapacity. In the past, others may have said, "You can't do that" so as to shame the person; e.g. "You can't watch TV/be with those people/eat this food/do that activity/etc." This "can't" took other forms as well: "Stop crying/don't be a cry baby/grow up/toughen up/don't talk about that/shut up/etc." These commands express one reality: you "can't" talk about your emotional state and what's really going on.

Rather than being a way to state a simple, humbling truth, "can't" becomes a powerful tool to place people into positions of shameful submission. Instead of something obvious, such as, "You can't fly because you don't have wings" or "You can't touch the stove or else you'll burn yourself real badly," can't takes on the form of unhealthy social dynamics that leads to shame. 

Hence when the Church declares something very simple and pure and profound, such as, "You can't deliberately miss Sunday Mass without committing mortal sin," She isn't trying to shame us to go to Mass but reminding us of a very basic reality: the primacy of God in our lives, and the most obvious expression of that primacy is weekly worship as handed down to us from Christ Himself.

All the commandments and dogmas of the Church are interpreted as shaming mechanisms by people who themselves feel ashamed for whatever reason. They cannot be properly seen as humble statements of divine truth when a person is caught up in such a psychological-spiritual state. But in reality, these commandments and dogmas are lampposts to our happiness and freedom because they guide us to humility, and as Scripture tells us, "God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble" (Jas. 4:6).

Unlimited Interpretation and the Meaning of Marriage

The human capacity for understanding the action of signs (semiosis) also entails an infinite possibility of interpretation. Take any socially-established sign, such as a road sign or a word, and one would say that it signifies x, y, or z by social convention. But one can take that same sign and begin to read into it other possible meanings, either by shifting the context or removing the context or by taking the sign to mean something literally when it is supposed to be taken otherwise, etc. This process is the basis of deconstruction.

But this capacity to deconstruct a sign and reinterpret it has infinite possibilities. We stop only because of convenience. But we engage this process in the dreaded never-ending argument. In fact, this very process of going deeper and deeper into the sign is why an argument may never end. One sign leads to another, to another, to another, ad infinitum.

Where are the boundaries of a sign? Who establishes them, and how are they established? Is there ever a "final say"?

This process, the source of our uniqueness among the animal kingdom as rational animals, is supposed to be guided by "truth," by some sort of correspondence between the sign, our mind, and reality, by a relation. How do we know when the relation has actualized? Who is to say? We cannot appeal to God on this side of life because God is silent and leaves us to ourselves. Of course, in certain matters, God have not been silent—public revelation, and revelation has implications for rational discussion and hence all aspects of human life.

Nevertheless, dogma doesn't cover every particular, so in many matters we are seemingly left to ourselves. And in fact, reason enlightened by living faith has as its object a body of signs that has been given a protector of boundaries: the Church, who defines the proper meaning of a sign of revelation. The Magisterium of course does not mean that rational discussion is ended, but that it may have an end in certain respects. But what about rational discourse that isn't properly the object of faith?

This capacity of unlimited interpretation is why, for example, the marriage discussion (if there is a discussion) is so difficult. When people re-define what marriage means, then they are effectively stating, "We reject the boundaries established for this sign, and we establish our own." In this way, such advocates become like Protestants, and from thence shall begin the infinite fragmenting and splintering as human semiosis winds down its infinitely-complex trail. Marriage can now mean anything.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we abandon upholding traditional marriage, but I suppose it ought to guide us in our efforts. How do we discourse with people who are very eager and free to toy with the very rules and fabric of discourse itself? It's like trying to play a game with someone who is perfectly fine with cheating. And hence: can there be an actually-rational discussion with such a person?

But what about upholding traditional marriage through political movements? Well, although it may work temporarily, the situation can flip as soon as someone on the other side of the "discussion" takes political power. Hence "upholding" becomes "fighting" for power. And in fighting, we forget about living marriage itself as it ought to be lived, in purity and charity.

It should also be pointed out that anyone who is willing to break the boundaries of rational discourse itself through a free interpretation of marriage cannot be appealed to by means of reason. Should this situation be where force is used? Of course, a democratic society could never allow that. Is the problem then with democratic society?

Marriage and the Political Battle

1. Is marriage a purely social construct or is it intrinsic to the structured nature of sexual beings and discovered as such?

This is an either/or question. If marriage is discovered as intrinsic to nature, then it has a social construction but is not reducible to such.

If the first part of 1 is affirmed, then:

2.1) By whom is marriage constructed? (A similar question is: by what process does this social construction solidify?)

If part 2 of 1 is affirmed, then:

2.2) What is marriage in its fundamental essence among the animal kingdom? And among the human species?

Once either 2.1 or 2.2 are answered, then we can ask:

3) Who shall be given the power to protect this understanding of marriage?

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The Sacrament of Marriage crystalizes and perfects natural marriage. As a Sacrament, it receives its essence from Christ and is protected by Christ through the Church. Hence, whatever non-Catholics may want to say, marriage in the Church transcends the dialogue (if there is any) about the nature of marriage on the natural level but may contribute to that dialogue because it has the clarity of truth as to what marriage should be.

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Why would one give the State the power to determine and enforce what marriage is? And then, having given that power to the State, how could one in any meaningful way object to the Church's "intrusiveness" into peoples' private sex lives when those very private lives have been handed over on a silver platter to the State, which is far more powerful and omnipresent than the visible Church?

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A secular person answering the above questions will quickly reveal that the only possible reason that Christians could become involved in the political process surrounding the definition of marriage and hence family life would be to protect the family from its disintegration, i.e. to protect the children especially.

Nevertheless, the only real way to protect the family from its disintegration is by living a holy life and fostering holy families, which is not a political action although it has political consequences.

And while there is division among Christians themselves as to what constitutes marriage, to what purpose and effect shall a Christian engage those political processes to "defend" marriage?

It seems the only reasonable option is actually to live a holy life and, if one is married, to foster a holy family through the example of holiness.

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Relatedly, a Christian must ask himself if the urge to uphold the traditional understanding of marriage in the public sphere is actually an unconscious sense of taking responsibility for the actions of others. And further, to what extent is such an urge a manifestation of the desire to be loved by the world, by the Other, and hence also by one's own parents? Finally, if the Christian does not have the sufficient degree of purity to determine his true intentions in such work, then how effective can the Christian really be in the political process?

Let the wicked continue in their wicked ways, the depraved in their depravity! The virtuous must live on in their virtue and the holy ones in their holiness!
“Remember, I am coming soon! I bring with me the reward that will be given to each man as his conduct deserves. . . . Happy are they who wash their robes so as to have free access to the tree of life and enter the city through its gates! Outside are the dogs and sorcerers, the fornicators and murderers, the idol-worshipers and all who love falsehood.” (Revelation 22:11-15)

Ronald L. Conte on Unnatural Sexual Acts as Marital Foreplay

Question — 

Are unnatural sexual acts moral to use as foreplay, prior to an act of natural marital relations open to life? 

This all-too-common question asks whether married couples might use various types of unnatural sexual acts — manual sexual acts (masturbation of self or spouse, or various devices used in the same way), or oral sexual acts, or anal sexual acts — in the context of a subsequent, concomitant, or prior act of natural marital relations open to life. Sometimes the question refers specifically to completed sexual acts, i.e. acts that include sexual climax for one or both spouses. Other times the question refers to these same types of acts, but absent climax.

In a comment below, Mr. Conte clarifies that by sexual act, he means, 

... any deliberate use of the genital sexual faculty. Acts that are peripherally related to sexuality, such as flirting, kissing, embracing, are not per se sexual acts, even if they are in some sense sexual. 

When referring to per se sexual acts, Church documents use expressions such as: “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty” or “every genital act” or “every use of the faculty given by God for the procreation of new life”.

Source: ronconte [Ronald L. Conte, Jr.], comment, February 27, 2011 (4:31 p.m. PST), on "Unnatural Sexual Acts as Marital Foreplay," The Reproach of Christ Blog, February 20, 2011, accessed December 9, 2013, http://ronconte.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/unnatural-sexual-acts-as-marital-foreplay/.

To continue with the article:

There are three fonts of morality: (1) intention, (2) moral object, (3) circumstances. The Magisterium definitively teaches that to be moral an act must have three good fonts; any one bad font makes the act immoral and therefore sinful. [...]

The three fonts may be summarized in this way:

FIRST FONT: The intended end (or purpose) for which the act is chosen by the human person. The intention or purpose of the act is in the subject, the person who acts.

SECOND FONT: The intentionally chosen act with its moral nature, which is determined by the inherent ordering of the act toward its moral object. The moral object is the end, in terms of morality, toward which the chosen act is directed, in and of itself. The choice of an act by the human person necessarily includes a choice of the act and its essential moral nature and its moral object. The moral nature and moral object of the act are in the objective act, not in the subject who chooses the act.

THIRD FONT: The circumstances pertaining to the morality of the act, especially the consequences. A moral evaluation of the reasonably anticipated good and bad consequences of the chosen act, in terms of the love of God and neighbor, determines the morality of this font.

There is no other basis for the morality of an act apart from these three fonts. For any act to be moral, all three fonts must be good. If any one font is bad, the act is immoral, even if the other fonts are good. Each and every knowingly chosen act is judged solely by the three fonts of morality. The three fonts of morality are the sole determinant of the morality of each and every knowingly chosen act, without any exception whatsoever. Whoever rejects or contradicts this teaching overturns the very foundation of every moral teaching in the one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

Analysis of the Question

1. First Font – The intention is to use certain types of acts as foreplay, for the purpose of preparing for an act of natural marital relations. The intended end is good: natural marital relations open to life.

2. Second Font – The Magisterium teaches that, in order to be moral, a sexual act must be marital and unitive and procreative. The marital, unitive, and procreative meanings are the three interrelated good moral objects of any moral sexual act.

Evil is a deprivation of good; moral evil is a deprivation of some good required by the moral law, i.e. required by the love of God and the love of neighbor as self. The love of God and neighbor requires that each and every sexual act be marital, unitive, and procreative. When a sexual act is non-marital or non-unitive or non-procreative, then the act has a deprivation in its moral object, making the object evil and the act intrinsically evil.

An unnatural sexual act is intrinsically evil because this type of act is not procreative; it is inherently ordered toward the procreative meaning intended by God for each and every sexual act. Unnatural sexual acts are also not truly unitive (even if there is a type of mere physical union) because this is not the type of union intended by God for marriage. So even when the two persons committing the unnatural sexual acts are married to each other, the procreative and unitive meanings are absent, making such acts intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral.

3. Third Font – Sometimes this question is posed with a description of some dire (or supposedly dire) circumstance, such that the spouses would supposedly be unable to achieve natural marital relations without unnatural sexual acts as foreplay, or the wife would be unable to achieve sexual climax without unnatural sexual acts before, during, or after natural marital relations.

I find it difficult to believe that a Catholic married husband and wife cannot possibly consummate their love for one another, within the holy Sacrament established by the love of God, without the use of intrinsically evil and gravely immoral sexual acts. But even if this were the case, the Magisterium teaches that intrinsically evil acts are always immoral, regardless of intention or circumstances. [...]

Unnatural sexual acts are intrinsically evil due to the deprivation of the procreative and unitive meanings. And the presence or absence of sexual climax does not change the moral object. An unnatural sexual act with sexual climax has the same evil moral object as an unnatural sexual act without sexual climax. The moral object has not changed, and so the moral nature of the act has not changed; it remains intrinsically evil. Therefore, no type of unnatural sexual act, with or without climax, can be used by a married couple at any time, regardless of whether or when an act of natural marital relations occurs.

All non-marital sexual acts are intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral. All non-unitive sexual acts are intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral. All non-procreative sexual acts are intrinsically evil and always gravely immoral. [...]

But lest anyone claim that no theologians give this type of answer, consider the following quotes from Catholic theologian Alice von Hildebrand. She wrote an article, criticizing the approach to sexuality used by Christopher West, and explaining the position of her late husband, theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand, on sexuality and in particular marital sexual ethics. Her answer is the theological position of herself as well as her husband, whom Pope Pius XII called a “twentieth century Doctor of the Church.” [...]

Saint Augustine of Hippo, in his moral treatise ‘On the Good of Marriage,’ writes on the subject of sexual intercourse within marriage:

“…nor be changed into that use which is against nature, on which the Apostle could not be silent, when speaking of the excessive corruptions of unclean and impious men…. by changing the natural use into that which is against nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the case of husband or wife.” (Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, section 11).

The expression ‘that use which is against nature’ refers to unnatural sexual acts, such as oral sex, anal sex, or manual sex. Saint Augustine condemns such acts unequivocally. He even states that such unnatural sexual acts are even more damnable (i.e. even more serious mortal sins) when these take place within marriage. For God is even more offended by a sexual mortal sin that takes place within the Sacrament of Marriage, since this offense is not only against nature, but also against a Holy Sacrament. “So then, of all to whom much has been given, much will be required. And of those to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be asked.” (Lk 12:48).

“For, whereas that natural use, when it pass beyond the compact of marriage, that is, beyond the necessity of begetting, is pardonable in the case of a wife, damnable in the case of an harlot; that which is against nature is execrable when done in the case of an harlot, but more execrable in the case of a wife…. But, when the man shall wish to use the member of the wife not allowed for this purpose, the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place in her own case, than if in the case of another woman.” (Augustine, On the Good of Marriage, section 12).

In this passage, Saint Augustine first compares natural sexual relations within marriage, done out of impure desires, to the same natural sexual acts outside of marriage. He teaches that having natural sexual relations within marriage, when done to satisfy a somewhat impure desire, is pardonable, i.e. a venial sin, but that natural sexual relations outside of marriage is damnable, i.e. a mortal sin. Then Saint Augustine goes on to consider ‘that which is against nature,’ i.e. unnatural sexual acts. He condemns such unnatural sexual acts as ‘execrable’ (utterly detestable, abominable, abhorrent). Therefore these acts are among the worst of the sexual mortal sins. He also teaches that unnatural sexual acts within marriage, far from being permitted because they take place within marriage, are even worse, calling them ‘even more execrable,’ than the same unnatural sexual acts outside of marriage. Again, this is because the sin is not only against nature, but against a Holy Sacrament instituted by Christ himself for the sake of our salvation.

Therefore, unnatural sexual acts do not become permissible when these take place within marriage. Instead, unnatural sexual acts are made even more sinful when these take place within marriage because they offend against both nature and a Sacrament.

The answer of St. Thomas Aquinas:

Notice, in the quote [sic] below, that St. Thomas held sexual sins within marriage to be worse than adultery, because the act occurs within the good of marriage. He did not teach that all sexual acts within marriage are moral, nor did he teach that all sexual acts between a husband and wife are moral.

“And since the man who is too ardent a lover of his wife acts counter to the good of marriage if he use her indecently, although he be not unfaithful, he may in a sense be called an adulterer; and even more so than he that is too ardent a lover of another woman.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 154, article 8).

The phrasing ‘if he use her indecently’ refers to unnatural sexual acts within marriage. This is clear because the good of marriage emphasized by St. Thomas is the procreation of children (Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 154, article 2). St. Thomas could not be referring to natural marital relations when he says ‘if he use her indecently’ because even natural marital relations done with some disorder of desire still retains the unitive and procreative meanings. But unnatural sexual acts lack both meanings, and so they are contrary to the good of marriage. The use of unnatural sexual acts within marriage is therefore worse than adultery.

St. Thomas again condemns this same type of act later in the same question.

“Lastly comes the sin of not observing the right manner of copulation, which is more grievous if the abuse regards the ‘vas’ than if it affects the manner of copulation in respect of other circumstances.” (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 154, article 12).

First, the word ‘vas’ is Latin for vessel, referring to the use of other bodily orifices for sexual acts. If a husband treats his wife lustfully during natural marital relations, he sins. But he commits a more grievous offense, which is called by St. Thomas an abuse, if he sins by committing unnatural sexual acts (i.e. using an unnatural part of the body as a ‘vessel’ for sexual intercourse). Here St. Thomas explicitly (but in discrete language) condemns the sin of unnatural sexual acts within marriage.

Second, it is clear (in the quote from article 8 above) that St. Thomas taught that a married couple is not justified in committing any sexual acts whatsoever within marriage. Otherwise, he would not have taught that a man who is too ardent a lover of his wife commits a sin that is like adultery and yet worse than adultery. Therefore, those who claim that there are no sins for a husband and wife having sexual relations with each other are in error.

Third, neither does St. Thomas even consider the absurd argument that acts which are intrinsically evil and gravely immoral by themselves could become good and moral when combined in some way with natural marital relations open to life. If this were the case, then St. Thomas could not have compared a man who is too ardent a lover of his wife to an adulterer. For if he took the position of certain modern-day commentators, then he would have to say that a husband’s ardent love would be entirely justified, as long as “the semen are not misdirected.” Notice that Saint Thomas takes no such position; he does not sum up the marital act as merely the proper direction of semen, as so many persons erroneously claim today. [...]

[...] consider what the Magisterium teaches about the morality of sexual acts within marriage:

In Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI explicitly considers the idea that a set of sexual acts within marriage would be justifiable as long as some of the acts are procreative:

“Moreover, if one were to apply here the so called principle of totality, could it not be accepted that the intention to have a less prolific but more rationally planned family might transform an action which renders natural processes infertile into a licit and provident control of birth? Could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act?” (Humanae Vitae, n 3).

This principle of totality is, in essence, what is being proposed by some commentators today, who claim that only one sexual act out of many in the marital bedroom needs to be natural marital relations open to life. They suggest an approach that would justify any arbitrary number and kind of non-procreative and non-unitive sexual acts, as long as these occur as part of a set, or within the same arbitrary time frame, as an act of natural intercourse.

Pope Paul VI rejects this approach:

“The Church, nevertheless, in urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, which it interprets by its constant doctrine, teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life. This particular doctrine, often expounded by the magisterium of the Church, is based on the inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” (Humanae Vitae, n. 11-12).

The unitive significance and the procreative significance are inherent to the very nature of the marital sexual act. Therefore, the unitive and procreative meanings are moral objects, essential to make sexual acts within marriage good by their nature. And their absence makes the moral object evil, by the deprivation of a good required by the will of God for marriage, and the act intrinsically evil, by its very nature. Unnatural sexual acts are non-unitive and non-procreative, therefore these acts are intrinsically evil. [...]

“Neither is it valid to argue, as a justification for sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive, that a lesser evil is to be preferred to a greater one, or that such intercourse would merge with procreative acts of past and future to form a single entity, and so be qualified by exactly the same moral goodness as these. Though it is true that sometimes it is lawful to tolerate a lesser moral evil in order to avoid a greater evil or in order to promote a greater good,” it is never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it — in other words, to intend directly something which of its very nature contradicts the moral order, and which must therefore be judged unworthy of man, even though the intention is to protect or promote the welfare of an individual, of a family or of society in general. Consequently, it is a serious error to think that a whole married life of otherwise normal relations can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.” (Humanae Vitae, n. 14).

The procreative and unitive sexual acts of past or future cannot be merged to form a single moral entity, such that these intrinsically evil acts would become just as moral as natural marital relations open to life. For the deprivation of the unitive and/or procreative meanings is intrinsically evil. [...]

“But no reason, however grave, may be put forward by which anything intrinsically against nature may become conformable to nature and morally good. Since, therefore, the conjugal act is destined primarily by nature for the begetting of children, those who, in exercising it, deliberately frustrate its natural power and purpose, sin against nature and commit a deed which is shameful and intrinsically vicious.” (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, n. 54)

Unnatural sexual acts are intrinsically against nature because the conjugal act is primarily directed toward procreation, the begetting of children. Those persons (married or not) who deliberately choose sexual acts deprived of the natural power and purpose of procreation “sin against nature” and commit a shameful and intrinsically evil act. [...]

[...] any use whatsoever of matrimony exercised in such a way that the act is deliberately frustrated in its natural power to generate life is an offense against the law of God and of nature, and those who indulge in such are branded with the guilt of a grave sin.” (Pope Pius XI, Casti Connubii, n. 55) [...]

For all sexual acts are a deliberate use of the sexual faculty, and all unnatural sexual acts are a deliberate choice of act that are inherently non-procreative. If the Pope had wished to narrow his statements to only contraception, he would not have said “any use whatsoever,” or if he had wished to allow unnatural sexual acts within marriage, he would not have said “any use whatsoever of matrimony.” Instead, he unequivocally proclaimed the Magisterium’s definitive teaching, which is also found in natural law, that each and every marital sexual act must include both the unitive and procreative meanings. This teaching necessarily prohibits the married couple from engaging in any kind of unnatural sexual act (with or without climax), because all such acts lack the procreative and unitive meanings.

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Source: Ronald L. Conte, "Unnatural Sexual Acts as Marital Foreplay," The Reproach of Christ Blog, February 20, 2011, accessed December 9, 2013, http://ronconte.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/unnatural-sexual-acts-as-marital-foreplay/.

Gerard Nadal on Gay Marriage and the Church's Failure to Evangelize

Fox News reports that Cardinal Dolan, in an interview with David Gregory of Meet the Press, claims that the Church was “outmarketed” on the issue of gay marriage.

Asked why the church is losing the argument on gay marriage, Dolan responded, “Well, I think maybe we’ve been outmarketed sometimes. We’ve been caricatured as being anti-gay.” 

He said the church supports “traditional marriage and is not “anti-anybody,” adding, “When you have forces like Hollywood, when you have forces like politicians, when you have forces like some opinion-molders that are behind it, it’s a tough battle.”

Without knowing it, Cardinal Dolan has identified the core of the problem. Our leadership, with few exceptions, have adopted the superficiality of branding and marketing as a cheap substitute for the grittiness and tenacity of evangelization. Worse still, while we have abandoned evangelization and hewing to the hard line of the Gospel, it is the other side who have been engaged in the grit and tenacity of evangelization.

That’s right. The other side has been engaged in three decades of evangelization, while the majority of our priests and bishops have endeavored to be “non confrontational” and “nonjudgemental”.

The results speak for themselves. [...]

[It] begs the question as to how such a coup could have happened.

In truth, more than 85% of married Catholics ignore the Magisterium when it comes to the right use of sex in marriage and the use of contraception.

58% of Catholics approve of gay marriage.

To say that those numbers are the result of marketing is to suggest that the Gospel has roots shallower than grass. And on that matter, Pope Francis has spoken loud and clear.

Many priests reacted with scorn to the challenge by Francis that they and their bishops get out of the rectory and go out among the people in a bold new way. Francis sees clearly that the Church is dwindling in influence because the people don’t know who they are. They have lost sight of their great dignity while so very many of our clergy refuse to engage the culture for fear of alienating people or seeming judgmental. That timidity is often defended as the cardinal virtue of Prudence.

It isn’t.

It’s cowardice, pure and simple. [...]

In fact, when gay marriage passed in New York State, Cardinal Dolan was quoted in the NY Daily News as saying:

“Our Senate leaders, we highly appreciated them being with us all along,” he explained. “When they kind of assured us it didn’t have much of a chance — not that we let up, but we probably would have been much more vigorous and even more physically present if we knew there was a chance.”

Perhaps. But activism built on an unevangelized church is like building a house on a foundation of sand. The truth is that a solidly evangelized Church would be much more resistant to the evangelists from the culture of death. As Chesterton observed, the man who stands for nothing will fall for anything. And that’s what has happened. A people who have been abandoned by their shepherds are being torn apart by the wolves. Now a chief shepherd chalks that up to “marketing.” [...]

The truth is that there are a fair number of gay clergy. There are an even greater number who do not stand with the Church on abortion, contraception, or the right use of sex in marriage. So, these issues never get preached or taught, or when they do, it is the Magisterium that gets pilloried.

It wasn’t a marketing issue that has led to the disintegration of Western Civilization.

In the wake of Vatican II our seminaries descended into chaos at every level, with some earning the moniker of “pink palace,” so notorious were they for their homosexual subcultures. Many of those seminarians were ordained. When Pope Benedict XVI was elected to the Papacy he undertook an Apostolic Visitation of our seminaries to address this problem, among others.

Today we see the fruits of that chaos from the 60′s and 70′s, even the 80′s. We see the fruits of nonevangelization on our part and the fruits of the other side’s evangelization.

They have a positive view of themselves, of their lifestyle, and of their contribution to society. They preach that vision in season and out of season with a singularity of focus that resembles the singularity and tenacity of St. Paul the Apostle. They push and push and push. Then they push some more. They go into the schools, and businesses, and the public square. They preach in churches and synagogues, and in civic associations. They boldly challenge any who stand in their way, and took singular aim at Cardinal O’Connor, even going so far as desecrating the Eucharist in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Perhaps we could learn a lesson in evangelization from the other side, clergy and laity alike.

We weren’t outmarketed.

We were outevangelized.

That’s our great failure and our great shame.

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Source: Gerard M. Nadal, "Responding to Cardinal Dolan: We Were Not 'Outmarketed' on Gay Marriage, We Were 'Outevangelized'," Coming Home Blog, December 1, 2013, accessed December 3, 2013, http://gerardnadal.com/2013/12/01/responding-to-cardinal-dolan-we-were-not-outmarketed-on-gay-marriage-we-were-outevangelized/.

G.K. Chesterton and Austin Ruse on "Gay Marriage"

When I was a freshman in college, I flew to China for my spring break with the chamber singer choir in which I sang for a tour. At the time, there were two homosexual choir members, both of whom I looked up to as singers because they were very talented. I remember as we flew from Shanghai to Beijing, I was seated next to one of them, and we talked for a while on various topics. Eventually he brought up how he had recently gone to some sort of political convention promoting the homosexual cause. He told me how he was sorely disappointed because he had been looking forward to intelligent conversation and meeting other like-minded men but found out that most of the men there simply "confirmed the stereotype about gays," namely, most of them were looking to hook up and have anal sex. My choir friend told me that he felt that such behavior betrayed their very cause because it showed them to be precisely what they're demonized for being: sexual hedonists rather than people who carry intellectual and moral weight. I agreed and still agree.

My father, who did his medical internship in San Francisco hospitals, would tell me stories about how some of the most horrific trauma he would see came from men in the homosexual communities, trauma caused by violent "sexual" activity.

I recently read a fascinating article on the issue of homosexual promiscuity, and I want to quote some excerpts with my emphases:

Lee [a homosexual author] writes about a gay bookstore in Austin, Texas called Lobo’s where if you look in the front window you see bookshelves full of books, gay books certainly but books. In the back, behind a curtain was a section on pornography. No one could be seen among the stacks of books, everyone was in the back room. He said such an arrangement was perfect for the big lie that active homosexuality was normal and non-threatening to any straight person looking in the front window. The reality, though, was that everyone was in the back room with the porn. This was the reality of his life and the lives of gay men....

Lee got a computer and continued his futile attempt to find gay monogamy. He joined a Yahoo group loosely affiliated with Dignity, the “Catholic” organization that affirms gays in their active homosexual way of life. A young man posted a note asking if “any of the subscribers attached any value to monogamy?” He received “dozens of responses, some of them quite hostile and demeaning, and all but one—mine—telling him to go out and get laid because that was what being gay was all about.” ...

Reilly [another author] quotes psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey Santinover in Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth that “The typical homosexual (needless to say there are exceptions) is a man who has frequent episodes of anal intercourse with other men, often with many different men. These episodes are 13 times more frequent than heterosexuals’ acts of anal intercourse, with 12 times as many different partners as heterosexuals.”

Reilly goes further. “The most rigorous single study—the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study [1987]—recruited nearly 5,000 homosexual men and found that: ‘a significant majority of these men … (69 to 82%) reported having 50 or more lifetime sexual partners, and over 80% had engaged in receptive anal intercourse with at least some of their partners in the previous two years.’” ...

Dr. Santinover cites a study by two homosexual researchers that found that out of “156 couples studied, only seven had maintained sexual fidelity; of the hundred couples that had been together for more than five years, none had been able to maintain sexual fidelity.” They said, “[t]he expectation for outside sexual activity was the rule for male couples and the exception for heterosexual couples.” 

Reilly cites a 1997 Australian study that showed “only 15% of the men reported having fewer than 11 sex partners to date, while on the other end of the spectrum 15% had over 1,000 sex partners. A whopping 82% had over 50 partners and nearly 50% had over 100.”

Source: Austin Ruse, "The Real Lives of Gay Men," Crisis Magazine, November 22, 2013, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/the-real-lives-of-gay-men.

There is also a great article by Dale Ahlquist that summarizes G.K. Chesterton's take on "gay marriage."

Chesterton shows that the problem of homosexuality as an enemy of civilization is quite old. In The Everlasting Man, he describes the nature-worship and “mere mythology” that produced a perversion among the Greeks. “Just as they became unnatural by worshipping nature, so they actually became unmanly by worshipping man.” Any young man, he says, “who has the luck to grow up sane and simple” is naturally repulsed by homosexuality because “it is not true to human nature or to common sense.” He argues that if we attempt to act indifferent about it, we are fooling ourselves. It is “the illusion of familiarity,” when “a perversion become[s] a convention.” 

In Heretics, Chesterton almost makes a prophecy of the misuse of the word “gay.” He writes of “the very powerful and very desolate philosophy of Oscar Wilde. It is the carpe diem religion.” Carpe diem means “seize the day,” do whatever you want and don’t think about the consequences, live only for the moment. “But the carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people.” There is a hopelessness as well as a haplessness to it. When sex is only a momentary pleasure, when it offers nothing beyond itself, it brings no fulfillment. It is literally lifeless. And as Chesterton writes in his book St. Francis of Assisi, the minute sex ceases to be a servant, it becomes a tyrant. This is perhaps the most profound analysis of the problem of homosexuals: they are slaves to sex. They are trying to “pervert the future and unmake the past.” They need to be set free.... 

Philo of Alexandria said, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a terrible battle.” But compassion must never compromise with evil. Chesterton points out that balance that our truth must not be pitiless, but neither can our pity be untruthful. Homosexuality is a disorder. It is contrary to order. Homosexual acts are sinful, that is, they are contrary to God’s order. They can never be normal. And worse yet, they can never even be even. As Chesterton’s great detective Father Brown says: “Men may keep a sort of level of good, but no man has ever been able to keep on one level of evil. That road goes down and down.” 

Marriage is between a man and a woman. That is the order. And the Catholic Church teaches that it is a sacramental order, with divine implications. The world has made a mockery of marriage that has now culminated with homosexual unions. But it was heterosexual men and women who paved the way to this decay. Divorce, which is an abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Contraception, another abnormal thing, is now treated as normal. Abortion is still not normal, but it is legal. Making homosexual “marriage” legal will not make it normal, but it will add to the confusion of the times. And it will add to the downward spiral of our civilization. But Chesterton’s prophecy remains: We will not be able to destroy the family. We will merely destroy ourselves by disregarding the family.

Source: Dale Ahlquist, "G.K. Chesterton: It's Not Gay, and It's Not Marriage," Crisis Magazine, February 21, 2013, accessed November 22, 2013, http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/g-k-chesterton-its-not-gay-and-its-not-marriage. 

Human Rights Campaign, the Discourse of Equality, and the Joker

Although I don't pay much attention to the same-sex marriage movement as well as its related equal rights movement for the LGBT community, it's almost impossible to avoid these things in our society. There are two facets of the complementary movements that I've noticed that I would like to comment on: 1) its discourse that capitalizes on the ambiguity of key words; and 2) its values that supervene upon this ambiguity.

As with all discourse, there are key words and phrases that set the same-sex equality movement discourse apart from others. One can see these phrases collected or implied on the Human Rights Campaign website, for example, or in their nearly-ubiquitous equal sign logo. This list could go on, but here are some that come off the top of my mind: same, sex, movement, equality (and equal), right(s), human, marriage, love, partners, gays (and variants), choice, freedom, self-determination, tolerance, acceptance, advocate, attraction. These are the positive words, but there are also negative words, such as homophobia, bigot (and variants), fag, queer, unnatural, Bible, intolerant, un-accepting, religion, dogmatic, judgmental, and other vulgar or graphic terms.

Interestingly, when one looks at the broadest of these key terms, the discourse under examination becomes almost indistinguishable from other discourses of a similar kind, such as the pro-choice movement, libertarian thought, modern political liberalism/progressivism, secular advocacy, the advocacy of scientism, etc. These are worldviews similar to what Husserl called the Lebenswelt. They are discourses that collectively organize the perception and appropriation of reality in a way that "makes sense" or that attempts to minimize cognitive dissonance, such as the reality of physical and genetic difference between male and female species, the reality of death, or, above all, the reality of God.

But if these broad key words are shared, then there is a foundational post-Enlightenment political-philosophical discourse that roots those words and makes sense of them; we could call it a "cenoscopic discourse" that gives birth to particular discourses. And these key words are necessarily ambiguous. For example, what is meant by same/equality? The answer is self-evident to a person who unquestioningly subscribes to the discourse. Its answer is as natural as a fish in water, but notice that in order to answer the question, such a subscriber will consult other key words within the same discourse. The web of key words is thus self-reinforced, hearkening back to Descartes' important contribution to the modern mind: self-produced certitude and all the solipsism that follows from that, culminating in Bertrand Russell's own admission of solipsism: "We can witness [only] what goes on in our heads, and [not] anything else at all" (1959: 26). It is literally impossible to think outside the box of a discourse without awareness and external light leading to Lonerganian insight.

The questioning may continue: what does love mean? In what way can one love be "equal" to another? Who/what adjudicates the validity or equality of any love? Why isn't the desire that leads to rape or pedophilia equal to the love that leads to same-sex or heterosexual relationships? Of course, such a question will cause a knee-jerk negative reaction, culminating in accusations of intolerance, judgmentalism, dogmatism, and bigotry. The reason is that even though the question does not declare any explicit judgment, it implies certain judgments that are contrary to the same-sex discourse. These judgments, one could say, are alien, are analogically homophobic to the homo-accepting Lebenswelt, and hence such judgments are seen as a threat. In fact, everyone understands at least implicitly that to frame a question in a certain way requires firstly a certain way of looking at things, because the frame implies the framer and vice versa; this is the possibility for rhetorical and loaded questioning. Discourse is a frame. The question reveals the frame just as the frame of a picture gives finality to the picture itself. A picture without frames, without borders, becomes indistinguishable from the Real.

These questions, however, reveal the ambiguity of the same-sex discourse and its key words. It reveals that such words are not simply used analogically but ambiguously or even worse, equivocally (perhaps because its users are nominalists). And the discourse and all related discourses rely absolutely upon such ambiguity. It is imperative that no one knows what love is, what "nature" is, what it exactly is that one "chooses" or "self-determines" but simply that one has "choice." It is like the anarchic Joker from Nolan's The Dark Knight, who says, "Do I look like a guy with a plan? [...] I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just do things." Oddly enough, the Joker's own discourse falls right into the modern political-philosophical discourse that I've been describing thus far. It is essential to the project (or "plan" or "scheme") that human rights remain floating values that one can pick and choose like apples from a tree, the tree being...what? And who planted it?

If love is an empty placeholder, then why not call it "equal" as well? If sex/gender are indistinguishable, then what is marriage? Yes, the destruction of distinctions leads inevitably to a discourse of "tolerance," which is impossible on its own terms. The discourse of tolerance, as is any discourse by its very terms, is intolerant of other discourses. A discourse, to be distinguishable from other discourses, must be intolerant in its foundation.

Yet again, discourses can be either ideoscopic or cenoscopic, particular or general, but that is another topic.