It's Not Supposed To Be Anything

Ideology and Identity

There was a post on Vox Nova a couple months ago that I've meant to briefly come back to here but never got around to it until now. The premise of the post was talking about Žižek on Christianity. I have no real interest in that in itself (I think Arturo Vasquez's conclusion that he's "the intellectual clown of the petit-bourgeois left" pretty much sums up my feelings there).

However, what I did think was worth pointing out was the question of Christianity-as-ideology vs genuine Christian faith:

If we look at the “ordinary” practice of Catholicism (or Christianity in general), we see that we are often caught up in externalities—the forms of being Catholic—and that the substance seems to be overlooked. Indeed, the radical core of the Christian message is often actively discounted: “Yes, scripture says X and the saints did Y, but what is really important for us is Z.” Far too often Christianity is functioning not as a liberation from the world, but as an ideological system that keeps Catholics chained to the world—in Zizekian terms, true faith is replaced by a Christian fantasy.

The external forms that masquerade as “true Catholicism” depend on whether one is “liberal” or “conservative” (suggesting that there are at least two ideological fantasies in play in the Church today): devotion to “traditional Catholicism” or “the spirit of Vatican II”, rubricism, inclusiveness, pro-life activism, social justice work, etc. A commonality emerges if we examine them from a Zizekian perspective. The psychological attractiveness lies in the reassurance that if I believe/do/act in these ways, then I will be a “real” Catholic (in the sense of a totalizing identity) and, perhaps even more importantly, the other—the Pope, the institutional Church, my pastor, the other members of my parish, the beloved community—will love me and accept me.

To me this seems highly relevant to the whole "Renegade Trads" idea. Some of you may have noticed that I recently added to the description of the blog in the side-bar a rejection of identity-politics. Obviously part of the problem, of the "inauthenticity" that many people (both within and without the Church) see in modern Christianity, is this sense that (especially in its conservative or reactionary forms; political labels both) it is just another sort of identity-craft for many, an ideological masquerade. To paraphrase what I wrote in the comments:

I myself have been mulling over for some time the paradox of the Church as Mystical Sinless Bride, a community which is set in opposition to The World, but which is also necessarily in the world and incarnate in the visible Institutional Church which is, being made up of mortal human sinners as it is, just as much a part of The World as any other polity. I think this paradox is similar to what I've written before about Ecclesia and Synagoga being distinct and yet one, and how such a simple dualism is not the structure of the symbolic syntax of Christianity.

So I would whole-heartedly agree: this is what needs to be transcended. I would also argue, however, that it never can be fully in this life. This is why the history of the Church is one of constant decay and then reform. The Saint will reject all sorts of identities only to feel a new one crystalizing around the identity of that reform or renunciation itself…and so then will need to “break out” again and again and again, constantly running from the self-alienation of objectifying in any identification with/in The World (as any identity is).

Often I notice this happening with myself. I have always been suspicious of adhering to any pre-packaged identity since I was a child, but several times my attempt to craft an identity around the very rejection of that or around outsider status...has simply hardened into a new sort of oppositional-identity, and defining oneself as what one isn't can be just as dangerous as defining oneself as what one is.

I even fear with the whole renegade trads thing that too often I think of my friends and allies and I as a special "sane yet orthodox and traditional" in-group set against the Novus Ordo conservative nutcases on the one hand, the crazy rad-trads on the other, and the progressivist heretics on both feet, in an "us-them" sort of contempt where only we have our priorities correct. So I must constantly remember to temper myself and others against that sort of arrogant and ultimately limiting vision.

The Poena Damni

It's been an odd and agitated month of ups and downs. I had a strange dream last night; it wasn't a nightmare really, but it was extremely painful. I'm half-worried that I may have had a minor heart-attack in my sleep (or maybe it was just a bad cramp from my mattress, lol).

But in the dream I started out very confident that I could undergo martyrdom, but then they began to actually crucify me, except it was just on sort of a board rather than a cross, and I lay on the board and they put one nail through my left hand and one directly through my heart. That didn't hurt so much, and I thought "Okay, I can do this," but then as soon as they started lifting the board vertically and my weight thus started being placed on the nails, the one in my heart started to just burn like no pain I'd ever felt before.

Actually, I think that it was up to me to lift myself vertically, and so it became a question of will power, it turned out I was in control of the whole thing. I tried a few times (I don't really know how it would have worked physically) to will myself upright with the board, but as soon as any of my weight started being supported by the nail in my chest I would give up and fall back down.

I've often thought that if pain was inflicted on me outside my control this would be not as bad as having to make a choice, because in the former case there is nothing you can do except go along with it passively (maybe even able to dissociate from your own body), whereas the latter requires a fortitude I don't always have and an active presence of mind that would seem to make the whole thing worse. However, in this case I thought to myself "This would be terrible even if it were just happening to me involuntarily, because the pain of even putting a little bit of weight on the nail is awful. I'm glad I can choose not to go through with this, I don't know how Christ did it for three hours!" And I started panicking terribly about pain, realized I couldn't force it on myself, and removed myself from the board and ran off weeping feeling very much humbled.

I woke up feeling very much resolved to try to abstain from sin, realizing that every time I sinned, I (from the eternal perspective of God) increased the pain I caused Christ on the cross, that His sufferings were so much greater than I could even willingly stand for a few seconds, that His pain was increased for every sin committed or to-be-committed in history, and that this idea that I would do that to Him whom I love was terrifying (and all the more terrifying "knowing" that it's probable I will again.)

And yet I say it wasn't a nightmare because, I suppose, in a nightmare I'm always running from something awful I expect to be coming (but never usually does). In this case, besides the moment of panic anticipating what it would be like if I were to actually hang there with my full weight for hours, I would not say fear was the dominant experience in this dream, but rather pain (physical pain) because the pain was already there (and fear is, as I said, more an anticipation). So when I woke, there was no lingering panic or anything like that as is characteristic of a nightmare (and as awful as the pain was, I still think fear is worse.)

Nevertheless, this all got me thinking of something else I've been pondering a lot lately which is the real nature of pain and loss, and being proud of my own resilience and ability to, with the help of friends, get up again and be proactive and enjoy life once more so quickly even in the face of loss or grief or disappointed desires. I've been thinking lately something along the lines of that the experience of sadness or deprivation being selfish and even infantile, because there are so many good things in the world that, even if one good thing is taken away from us, there is no reason we can't enjoy so many others unless we have idolatrously placed our Last End in a specific one. People who complain about being deprived of one good (even if it is something like food, or sleep, or a loved one) seem to be ignoring the fact that our wills can rest in any Good, and that even if we are denied something we want, there are a billion other desirable things and experiences in the world and reasons to keep on fighting.

At the same time, pain clearly has a "positive" reality subjectively. Aquinas says about pain and sorrow that they are unlike desire inasmuch as desire is about being drawn toward a good not yet obtained, but that pain and sorrow about positively fleeing away from the absence of a good, and absence constructed by perception as a positive presence (although evil is only ever, really, a mere absence). I'm not sure if this means anything practically in terms of being able to "think our way out" of sadness or pain in all cases. Invariably, even if I rest my will in moving towards some other good, I will still be naturally inclined flee from, in another aspect, the absence of the good of bodily health (ie, the subjective experience of physical pain, nausea, etc). And that's simply how we're designed for self-preservation (and why we need the virtue of fortitude for when the greater and more holistic good demands giving up self-preservation).

However, it would seem that other absences are more acquired than natural (ie, I won't grieve over the loss of someone I never even knew) and that, thus, deconstructing the pain of flight from these absences might be easier. The lack of certain material possessions, or certain goods I've trumped up in my own head...will only cause me to be sad or unhappy as long as I remain attached to the constructions of their absence as a positive evil, or refuse to place my desire in something else that is good and present and obtainable. And if (assuming no sin) I refuse to place it in something else (whether temporarily or permanently), it must mean the love for that thing is still worth even the pain of continued unfulfillment as regards it specifically (in regards to God in the life of the Saints, this may refer to the so-called "dark nights" where positive consolation is removed).

And even those evils that are naturally repugnant (like hunger or thirst or physical pain and what they signify) will not outlast the body. In fact, the only absence, the only lack, the only loss we really have to worry about is the poeni damni, the pain of the total loss of God in Hell, as the Catholic Encyclopedia describes:

The poena damni, or pain of loss, consists in the loss of the beatific vision and in so complete a separation of all the powers of the soul from God that it cannot find in Him even the least peace and rest. It is accompanied by the loss of all supernatural gifts, e.g. the loss of faith. The characters impressed by the sacraments alone remain to the greater confusion of the bearer. The pain of loss is not the mere absence of superior bliss, but it is also a most intense positive pain. The utter void of the soul made for the enjoyment of infinite truth and infinite goodness causes the reprobate immeasurable anguish. Their consciousness that God, on Whom they entirely depend, is their enemy forever is overwhelming. Their consciousness of having by their own deliberate folly forfeited the highest blessings for transitory and delusive pleasures humiliates and depresses them beyond measure. The desire for happiness inherent in their very nature, wholly unsatisfied and no longer able to find any compensation for the loss of God in delusive pleasure, renders them utterly miserable. Moreover, they are well aware that God is infinitely happy, and hence their hatred and their impotent desire to injure Him fills them with extreme bitterness. And the same is true with regard to their hatred of all the friends of God who enjoy the bliss of heaven. The pain of loss is the very core of eternal punishment. If the damned beheld God face to face, hell itself, notwithstanding its fire, would be a kind of heaven. Had they but some union with God even if not precisely the union of the beatific vision, hell would no longer be hell, but a kind of purgatory. And yet the pain of loss is but the natural consequence of that aversion from God which lies in the nature of every mortal sin.

Only this is inherently naturally unbearable. Every other sort of absence should be bearable, and indeed even in the abstract good, if we could rest our wills in even one little crumb or fragment of goodness. And, as long as we live, there is good all around us! Every rock and tree and sound is a good. Complaining because we are merely less happy than before (but still happy), that we have simply less good (but still plenty of good)...strikes me as rather ungrateful to God and spoilt (even though I know I do it all the time). The only truly repugnant evil is Hell. Our souls, in this life, are never filled with infinite Good (as they only can be in heaven), and yet the presence of even just some good is enough to make us relatively happy (though never, ultimately, to satisfy us).

So no matter what sort of pain I may be in, next time I find myself on a cross, I need to remember that if I can look down and see even one good thing, even if it is merely the experiential knowledge of the shape of one little pebble, they still haven't really taken anything essential to my happiness away from me, I still have some good, and any real and rightly ordered good, however small, can be a "ladder to heaven," as it were, a source of happiness and desirabilty as a starting point by which to orient my will on the trajectory to The Good.

Out of My Head

567 listens and counting...

Stupidest. Article. Ever.

Some of you may have seen this already, but it's just so egregious it has to be pointed out.

Extreme homophobic prejudice and caricatures permeate Verrecchio's article. Including, right off the bat, insinuating that homosexuality is the cause of child abuse. Now, we can't deny that statistics indicate a certain disproportion there (about 1/3rd of abuse cases are same-sex, even though homosexuals are definitely not 1/3rd of the total population), especially in the priesthood. But when girls are abused (as is still true in the majority of cases in society at large) is anyone going to claim that heterosexuality is at fault!? Obviously not, and besides, there is simply the fact that sexually predatory behavior has been shown to be a different and largely independent phenomenon from normal sexual orientation; for example, many male abusers of boys prefer women when it comes to their tastes in adults, and there are even gay men (in terms of adult orientation) who abuse little girls.

But, though the scapegoating of homosexuals in the sex abuse crisis is disgusting and cowardly on the part of conservatives, and though his psycho-pathologizing of it as narcissistic, symptomatic of masculine gender insecurity, and emotional neediness is likewise reprehensible (did he ever stop to think that maybe the emotional problems or affectations of homosexuals are not intrinsic to it, but rather the result of social homophobia, heterosexist constructions of manhood, etc??) those aren't even the dumbest things in this article. The dumbest thing is his thesis that there is a correlation between homosexuality and progressive liturgy and liturgical abuse. To this...anyone in the know can only say: ha!

I have been surprised, or perhaps not-so-surprised upon considering it, that my blog attracts a particular crowd, that there are a variety of tropes that keep popping up among readers who contact me. And I'm proud of that; this is really a blog for outsiders, after all, and hearing people's different experiences has been great. The point is: I can tell you, most gay Catholics I have now met (both orthodox/celibate and not) are trad-leaning, and there are clearly many homosexuals (if often closeted) in trad-land. Does Verrecchio not know of the trope of the "liturgy queen"???

In this case, a generic lumping of various types of progressivism into a single bogeyman just doesn't work out and is demonstrably absurd. The situation is much more nuanced and complicated than that, and in the current system of alliances there are some very surprising bedfellows (no pun intended...)

Why Quidditch Does Make Sense

This post has nothing to do with Catholicism whatsoever, but I have nowhere else as an outlet to post it, so please bear with me. If you have no interest in this sort of thing, just ignore this one; it's probably just about the only thing even remotely close to a "sports" related post that you'll ever see me do.

This is about something that has bugged me for a long time: the magical sport of Quidditch in the Harry Potter universe has never made sense to me. But I finally had an epiphany today that may explain it.

I'm apparently not the only one. In the press conference for the launch of a new website, authoress J.K. Rowling announced that she was releasing some 18,000 words of new material on the Harry Potter universe (not new stories, but new trivia basically), and made the following comment promising a further explanation of Quidditch:

“I don’t think I’ve given all the stuff on Quidditch yet. Men always ask me about Quidditch because the number of, and I love geeky people so I do not say this in a pejorative way, but the number of geeky men who have come up to me to argue with me about Quidditch – I’d be a lot richer if I had a quid for every one. They just think it’s illogical. But it’s not illogical and I had a speech by Dumbledore in the first book that never made it in explaining why Quidditch is not illogical, so at some point I will put that on the site. Thank you for reminding me.”

I can't say what the "explanation" she will offer will be, but I can say that up until this quote got me thinking about the topic again today (and doing a little more research) I would have been one of those geeky men who thought Quidditch was illogical. However, I was helped to make a realization of how it might not be illogical (though I'm not sure it's the explanation she'll ultimately give.)

The objection to the logic of Quidditch that many people have boils down to this (I'm just going to assume that if you want to read this post, you already know the rules): if the Seeker catches the Snitch, they almost always win, so this makes the Chasers and everything with the Quaffle seem superfluous. "No," you'll be told, "Because if the other team is more than 150 points ahead, you can catch the Snitch and still lose!" True enough, but at that point...why would any Seeker of a team losing by more than 150 points ever willingly catch the Snitch?

Sure, there might be rare cases (such as that of the World Cup presented in the fourth book) where a Seeker "knows" his team will never catch up points-wise and so catches the Snitch to end the match even though he knows they'll lose. But such cases of "honor" or "ending things on our own terms" seem like they would be rare. And, frankly, I still have a hard time believing that Krum, within just a few hours of the match beginning (when it's said Quidditch matches can go days and weeks), didn't think his team could make even just the two measly goals that would have been needed to close the gap and set them up for a win (assuming he still caught the Snitch).

Likewise, I understand that if two Seekers were both going after the Snitch, the Seeker of the losing team's hand might be "forced" to catch the Snitch first if he could so as to regain some sort of honor for his team, because otherwise the other guy would get it and the loss would be that much more monumental. But I think this case would be rare too, and in terms of the actual outcome of the game it's still inconsequential--that team still loses. I'm not sure mere "honor" is enough motive to designate as logical the idea of Seekers from the losing team regularly catching the Snitch rather than waiting until the gap is closed.

In general, it doesn't seem like there is usually a reason (no reason internal the game itself, at least) for a Seeker on a massively losing team to not simply wait until his team has made enough goals to cover the difference before catching the Snitch. Which means the team that catches the Snitch will almost always win, meaning that the Chasers and Quaffle-points thing...seems almost always just a superfluous complication.

However, it was suggested to me today that the rankings in Quidditch may not be based on total number of wins, but on total number of points for the season. The play-offs or final cup match might probably be a simple tournament-style thing based on wins, but the regular season play (that determines a team's placement in the play-off bracket) may be based on total points.

And if that's true, then it makes perfect sense why the Seeker from a losing team would be motivated to catch the Snitch (especially in cases where the other Seeker was hot on his trail) for more reason than just "honor." Namely: it may be strategically necessary in terms of total season points.

If rankings are based on total points, it makes total sense that you'd rather get 150 points for your team (while your opponents get, say, 160)...rather than getting zero points (while your opponents get 310). And, in fact, if you were already more points in the ranking ahead of your opponents than the spread between your final scores for that particular game, catching the Snitch (even while losing the match) might actually even ensure that you still outrank them in terms of total season points.

For example, if you have 890 points for the season and they have 870...it makes strategic sense to choose a loss of 150-160 (bringing your total points to 1040 and theirs to 1030) rather than a loss of 0-310 (leaving your season points at 890, but bolstering theirs to 1180).

If this is how it works, then it is actually logical. And logic makes me happy.

Chicago Tomorrow

Things have been so up in the air I haven't mentioned this for a while, but a few of us are going to be meeting in Chicago tomorrow. And by "a few," I mean a lot fewer than I expected given how everyone's end-of-the-summer schedules are working out. I still don't the exact itinerary or schedule, but one thing that we are definitely planning to do is the 6:30PM Mass and Benediction at the Shrine of Christ the King (run by the ICRSS). If we meet beforehand downtown, I'll probably just bring my car and drive anyone there and back so that we don't need to try to take public transit (which is really hard to that particular locale, nor is that neighborhood great for eating and such after). I am excited to meet a few people from out of town.

The Clever Frenchman

There is something morally disordered about telling a lie. We may see this by analyzing the three fonts of morality involved.

A lie is a little more complicated, I think, than some other cases, inasmuch as there seems to be what we might call a mediate end in speech within the moral object before the proximate end. We could also thus, from a more "zoomed in" perspective on the process gone through by the Will, call this mediate end simply the first intended end, and the proximate end a foreseen and intended consequence, or something like that.

This mediate end I'm talking about is the fact that the faculty of speech is the object of intelligible good in-itself, even before we consider the results we desire to obtain from it. Which is to say, speech is not purely instrumental, but has a natural intelligible good of Knowledge/Truth which would suffice to draw the Will even if there were no consequences/instrumental effects to our speech.

An analogy of this sort of "mediate end" might be masturbation to obtain a sperm sample. Such an act remains disordered even when the proximate end is simply obtaining the sample, because the pleasure remains a natural end of the Will inseparable from the ejaculation which is actively chosen as instrumental (and yet which choice, in context, thus also renders the pleasure unintelligible). This is different, you will note, from a case where some other act, in which the ejaculation is not chosen as instrumental, results in an orgasm/ejaculation as simply an indirect side-effect.

Also note: I am not saying that there is anything wrong, in itself, with instrumentalizing goods in the process of obtaining some other good (in fact, our whole life is a process of following mediate goods to our Final Good). But the instrumentalization must respect the holism and integrity of all the mediate goods and their natural ends, the final good sought does not justify disordering or fragmenting other goods in the process (just like we cannot kill people even if they are going heaven.)

Anyway, back to the question of a lie. We've discussed the ends involved, now the moral object proposed, in itself, will be simply the act of making of some statement, which is in itself fine. And the circumstances are the context (social and linguistic) in which the statement is made and understood, and which will thus effect what consequences result.

However, there is, in a lie, a disorder between end and the object, even if good consequences result. Because there is a relationship of object to end that is not intelligible. Speaking is good and desirable because of truth, and thus should never be chosen thwarting that [mediate] end, even when there is some additional end the speech is being instrumentalized for.

Speech should achieve any further intended ends reasonably, through the conveyance of Truth or the natural good of Knowledge. Or, rather, the choice of speech should not involve a direct choice against this good. A lie, however, achieves its proximate end in the manner of deception or ignorance, the statement chosen is related to the intended result exactly by not being True/Reasonable and thus constitutes an active choice to sever the good of speech from its natural goodness.

To do this is to simply instrumentalize speech, and to (internal to the moral agent, mind you) identify its good with deception (or an effect achieved through deception) rather than Truth. It is to make the very grounds of intelligibility (language) unintelligible, to make logos, the very vehicle of Truth, a vehicle of its very opposite!

However, while Catholic morality has never allowed a direct lie to be told, there is an ancient tradition of allowing equivocation in order to conceal the Truth from someone (in order to avoid bad consequences of them knowing it) while still making a statement.

So, for example, the following story.

There as a stupid Nazi officer going through a French village looking for hidden Jews. This soldier only speaks German, and he hears there is a man in town who speaks German too and who is hiding some Jews. There is indeed in this village a clever Frenchman who speaks both German and French and who is, in fact, hiding some Jews under his floorboards.

The German officer gets to the Frenchman's house and demands, "Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Haben sie Juden??" ("Do you speak German? Do you have any Jews??")

The Frenchman could answer in German, "Yes, I speak German. Yes, I have Jews." He'd be telling the truth, but the bad consequences would make this seem morally problematic. He could say in German, "Yes, I speak German. No, I don't have any Jews," but this is a lie, and a direct lie can never be allowed even to save a life (we won't get into the arguments about "mental reservation" here). It would be an act of simply instrumentalizing speech to achieve a good consequence, but within the Will of the Frenchman, internal to the moral agent, it would still require a directly chosen severing of word from truth, a choice against the good of truth.

The Frenchman thus has two options. He can remain heroically silent; this might get him killed, but let's assume there is no positive obligation to speak in this situation (ie, let's assume the German is so stupid that he won't realize the silence means this is the man he's looking for or something like that, that the silence does not of itself "speak"). There is no obligation to choose a particular good, as long as you don't make a choice against it.

However, there is also another option that remains moral. Assuming the clever Frenchman has gained knowledge of the circumstance of the officer not knowing French, the Frenchman may answer, "Oui, je parle allemand. Oui, j'ai Juifs." ("Yes, I speak German. Yes, I have Jews.") He wouldn't even have to answer the question; saying something else true in French like, "The capital of France is Paris," or even a string of nonsense words, would also clearly suffice.

The stupid Nazi would not understand this true or meaningless statement, assumes the man only speaks French, and leave in frustration.

There is nothing wrong here, morally. People whose understanding of morality is a modern consequentialist one may think this is equivalent to a lie (and thus that either it is wrong, or that lies for good reason are okay), but really the genius of Catholic morality is that this situation would be considered categorically different than a direct lie (and rightly so!)

The proximate end of speaking this words is, presumably, to get the Nazi officer to leave. Speaking those French words in itself is neutral; there is no natural good ever harmed in the mere creation of certain sounds with the mouth, and even relative to the "mediate end" of the natural good of speech...there is no severing of Word from Truth within the mind or will of the moral agent. In speaking those words, the Frenchman has not chosen "the good of truth without truth" or anything like that (as would be the case in a direct lie).

The circumstantially-based foreseen consequence of the German not finding out the Truth he wants is non-controversial. And this would likewise be true if the Frenchman simply remained silent, so the continued ignorance can't be called a consequence of making the statement as compared to total abstinence from speech; and even if it could, this continued ignorance on the Nazi's part would not be a bad consequence, as he has no right to the truth.

Where people will perhaps object (incorrectly) is on the grounds that the man chose to speak in French based on his knowledge that the German would not understand, and that this makes it equivalent to a lie, to a choice of severing speech from truth.

This is incorrect, however. The German's lack of knowledge of French is not in itself evil as a circumstance. And it is not something the Frenchman actively chooses, because it simply is an already-existant fact. It thus does not enter into the proposal of the moral object since it is not something actively caused by the Frenchman. It remains a circumstance and thus cannot be involved in any disorder between object and end (the only moral evil that external circumstances can affect are the foreseen consequences).

You might say, "Yes, but his knowledge of the German's ignorance of French informs his choice to abstain from speaking German to him," but unless we're going to propose a positive obligation to make sure people understand what we say (which is absurd, and a practical impossibility), or a positive obligation to actively convey all Truth (or even just this truth) to the German (again, an impossibility, and this would also exclude even total silence)...this choice of abstinence (inasmuch as the non-act of abstinence can even be considered an active choice) from speaking German with him cannot be considered bad (if total silence would be allowed, speaking another language cannot be condemned either on these grounds).

The only thing some people might say at this point is that the relationship between the meaning of the (French) words spoken and the intended end of getting the German to leave is as disordered as in a lie, because conveyance-of-truth is not being actualized either way. However, this is incorrect because, as has been established above, the lack of conveyance-of-truth is an external circumstance, not inherent in the moral object of making the French statement. Internal to the moral agent himself, there is no severing of word and truth, no "good of truth without truth," even if no truth is actually conveyed externally. Because morality is internal and in some sense abstract; within the Reason of Frenchman himself, the truth and the statement are not severed (and so his own orientation towards the Good is not effected), even if in a sheerly external and accidental they are (ie, relative to the German).

The fact that the German doesn't know French (and thus the good of conveyance-of-truth is not actualized) is relevant only as a known circumstance, but since this doesn't lead to any moral defect...it's fine. And yet, who would deny that the clever Frenchman's statement was still intelligibly ordered to the Truth within his own Will?

In identifying the defect in telling a lie as internal to the moral agent, as involving not the question of foreseen understanding, but about whether language is severed from truth in order to be instrumentalized, some might object that this requires the conclusion that even making an untrue statement out-loud when you're all alone...would also be a lie and wrong.

However, this would be a misunderstanding of what I'm saying. I'm not saying that certain words have an inherent meaning (language is, after all, basically arbitrary) and that we can never make certain sounds because what the signify linguistically isn't true. Rather, that the very untruth of a statement cannot in itself be chosen as instrumental to another end (as in a lie, where the very effect sought is dependent on the other person understanding as true what is untrue).

If, however, an untrue statement needs to be used to cause an effect that has nothing to do with its untruth, in a context where the truth-value of the statement is accidental/non-instrumental (like, for example, if "Paris is the capital of Britain" was simply a pass-phrase for getting into a club), then this is clearly non-controversial, as there is already no truth-claim implied in this statement (fictional or hypothetical statements, clearly such in context, do not frustrate the good of speech, as there is a real good in the mere of idea of hypothetical realities.)

Practical Thoughts on Distribution of Communion

The biggest crisis in Catholic symbolic praxis today is almost certainly the abomination of communion on the hand. The total collapse of liturgy and tradition is most evident, painfully so, when you see some lay woman in a pant-suit and with her head uncovered putting the Blessed Sacrament into another lay woman's hands. Sometimes this idea that we can all just handle the eucharist now tempts me to throw up my hands and say "the farce is up!" and abandon religion entirely, because the total annihilation of the Sacred is, in this ultimate profanation, so seemingly evident.

But enough bitter ranting about that tragedy. Today, some practical considerations:

First, while I was at Mass today, it again struck me how long it takes them to distribute all the communion plates and cups to the ten EMHCs. This alone takes a good three minutes, even though distribution of communion itself, after that, takes only like ten. So using all those EMHCs takes time too, even if there is a net gain.

Second, it strikes me that people approaching in a line standing is not necessarily the fastest way to distribute. Certainly, having one line per minister makes little sense to me, as then we must always wait for the person who just received to step aside. If we are going to approach standing in lines, I think it would go quicker for each minister to have two lines. Then the minister can alternate lines and be giving communion to the person at the front of one line while the previous person from the other line is moving out of the way (and the next person taking his place, whom you can then immediately distribute to rather than having to wait for him to move up a spot).

Third, I've always found it inefficient how even trad churches distribute communion at the rail. I think the priest walking along the line giving communion could be just-as or even more efficient as the people approaching him in a line, but a lot of time is lost by the the "return trip" back to the beginning of the rail to distribute to the next rank of people.

Given that the people waiting fill-in pretty quickly when the people who have just received get up...it seems to me that, in many churches (depending on the length of the sanctuary), it might just be a more efficient use of time for the priest to simply wait a few seconds at the end of a trip to the left until the last few communicants have been "replaced" by the people behind them, and then start distributing again going down the line to the right starting with these. Wait a few seconds at the end of this trip to the right, and then start distributing again going down the line to the left, and continue to alternate back-and-forth like this.

To me, only distributing in one direction and then trekking back up to the "beginning" after every iteration seems inefficient. Is there any reason my way isn't done??

Genesis and Evolution

Some Christians have a hard time reconciling the traditional doctrine of original sin with belief in evolution, given that evolution over time is contingent on animal death. Indeed, animal death is the whole "engine" which drives natural selection.

This leads to a lot of bad attempts to square the circle. And so you see some conservatives creating bizarre theories of "retroactive" application of original sin, and some liberals eager to use it all to dismiss the doctrine of original sin or turn it into some wishy-washy purely poetic thing that merely describes our dependence on God and the state of chaos we are born into and need to find meaning in or something like that, rather than mortality being an actual result of an actual choice by an actual couple.

However, this all results from a simple misunderstanding. Specifically, it must be emphasized: original sin never applied to anything but humans. Animal death did exist before the Fall, and traditionally the Church never claimed otherwise.

For example, this from Aquinas:

In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals.

Outside sentimental attachment to animals and a sort of disturbing "creeping animism" in modern Christianity, traditional Christian theology has no reason to see their death as a problem, because in some ways animal death is only "death" by analogy. Since they don't have spiritual souls, animal death is basically just a material substance dissolving/changing forms, no more problematic than clay being molded into a different shape, or a glass shattering, or (more to the point) a robot or computer breaking down (animals being, traditionally, seen as something sort of like an organic robot; certainly, they don't experience qualia!)

Yes, "all creation has been groaning with the pains of childbirth up to the present time," but this is only relative to Man. The rest of creation did not change objectively. If it can be said to have fallen, it is only inasmuch as its purpose was to serve Man, and if Man's lofty position is downgraded, the nobility of his servants is relatively lower by comparison. However, there is no more reason to link animal death to Man's original sin than there is to link the outcome of our race in that regard to the test of the Angels. Original sin affected Man alone, as it is transmitted by descent, it did not extend to other species, either animal or angelic.

Additionally, most theologians traditionally taught that unglorified man (being a composite substance) has always been naturally inclined towards death just like animals, and that it was only the Preternatural Gift of Immortality which (before the Fall) kept us from dying when God first ensouled that which He had created from "the slime of the earth." So all this is very compatible with evolution, frankly. Really, our current state is not so much corrupted (as some Protestants might imagine) but simply returned to a state of animal nature without the preternatural aid of God to help us rise above that.

As for other issues raised by Genesis, as I explained in a post once, monogenism does not require a genetic bottleneck, merely the recognition that all human beings strictly-so-called (ie, ensouled with a spiritual soul) had at least one pair of common ancestors (in reality, science knows we have and have had many common ancestors, and in fact the current Most Recent Common Ancestor could have been as late as 2000 years ago, after Christ even, and the current Identical Ancestors Point as late as just 5000 years ago).

As for the whether the early chapters of Genesis are "myth"...I would be careful with that sort of terminology as Reginaldus explains in his comments on this post on the blog "New Theological Movement" (the "morning knowledge/evening knowledge" of the angelic intellect theory espoused by Augustine and Aquinas is especially interesting).

Saying "not written in the style of a history or science textbook" isn't the same as saying "myth" in the sense of a purely allegorical story used to express merely moral truths:

The spiritual sense must be founded on the literal. But metaphor (properly understood) is part of the literal sense.

So, no, metaphors do not require us to affirm that the words are first meant historically...

For example: "The Lord is my rock" does not mean that there is an historical rock, which we then use as a metaphor for God.

The "history" behind the creation metaphor is that the angels really did come to know God's plan of creation.

The "history" behind the life-span metaphor [...] would be the real virtues that these real people had.

[...]

In the cases of the two "metaphors" that I have mentioned, there would be "real events taking place" -- the angels really did come to know the plan of creation, and creation really did happen (though not necessarily in the order or time of Genesis 1).

Adam and company really did exist and live some time (though not necessarily those long years).

To say something is a metaphor is very different from claiming it to be myth or legend -- you are quite right on this point: Genesis is not pure myth, it is real history (but sometimes the history is told through metaphors).

Hence, when it says that God "walked" in the Garden (Genesis 2 and 3)-- we are not to think that God became incarnate and literally/historically walked in a Garden. Rather, this is a metaphor for the historical fact that God was with Adam and Eve.

No one should claim that the natural sciences "requires" a re-interpretation of the traditional theological essentials surrounding monogenism or original sin (in the Catholic tradition at least) in any sense of the word. They don't.

I would also be wary of reducing Genesis purely to some "myth." It may be stylized or metaphorical, but the "theological truth" of the Genesis story is a truth rooted in a historical event, a choice made by our first parents, by two real human beings, a male and a female whom God ensouled, who were originally immortal and in a state of grace, but who lost that for themselves and their descendents because they were tempted by the chief of the fallen angels, and from whom we all descend in at least one line of descent.

The reconciliation of the essentials of dogma with modern science is much easier than some apparently think, and some basic knowledge of traditional theology and evolutionary biology would have made that clear from the start.