Should Disordered Appetites be Civil Rights?
Posted in article on June 6th, 2009The news is filled with efforts through legislation or the use of the courts to undermine marriage by expanding its definition to somehow include homosexual partnerships. Anyone who questions whether such efforts serve the common good are increasingly dismissed as “homophobic” and intolerant.
However, namecalling will not change our position on this matter nor will it make us go away. At the forefront of the movement to protect marriage are Catholics who believe what the Church teaches. Our insisting that marriage remain what it has always been is adding to our precarious place in the culture these days. However, make no mistake; the Catholic Church will not change its position on the nature of marriage because it cannot. Truth is not up for grabs, no matter what the growing “dictatorship of relativism” throws our way.
Among the clearest summaries of the teaching of our Church on this matter was set forth by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XI) in the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” promulgated in 1986. Here are just a few of the clearly stated insights: “The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally.”
“To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent”.
“As in every moral disorder, homosexual activity prevents one’s own fulfillment and happiness by acting contrary to the creative wisdom of God. The Church, in rejecting erroneous opinions regarding homosexuality, does not limit but rather defends personal freedom and dignity realistically and authentically understood.”
What is clear upon reading this letter, the Sacred Scripture, the Catholic Catechism and the clear, unbroken teaching of the Church is that Catholics who are faithful cannot and will not accept the effort to undermine authentic marriage. Thus, those who follow the teaching of the Church may be on a collision course with the current approach to this matter being embraced by the US Administration.
President Barack Obama has declared June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month” and issued a Presidential proclamation which all but elevates practicing homosexuals to being given a suspect class classification under Civil Rights law. Among the Presidents comments he noted: “The LGBT rights movement has achieved great progress, but there is more work to be done. LGBT youth should feel safe to learn without the fear of harassment, and LGBT families and seniors should be allowed to live their lives with dignity and respect. My Administration has partnered with the LGBT community to advance a wide range of initiatives. At the international level, I have joined efforts at the United Nations to decriminalize homosexuality around the world. Here at home, I continue to support measures to bring the full spectrum of equal rights to LGBT Americans.” His appointments of openly activist homosexual leaders to significant positions in his administration only further signals where this administration may be headed.
This does not change the truth. Homosexual sexual acts, even if engaged in with one partner for a long time, can never be the equivalent of a marriage, no matter what any court or legislature says. The reason that marriage and the family founded upon it has become the foundation of civil societies across ethnic, geographical, religious and racial communities is because it is an institution revealed by the Natural Law. It is not some social construct which can be discarded, redefined or ever replaced. Efforts of some within the homosexual movement to equate how one engages in non-marital sexual acts with a member of the same sex with being a member of a particular race, or gender and thereby a “protected class” for civil rights purposes is legally and socially dangerous. One is a status; the other involves behavior, a chosen behavior and a lifestyle.
Some maintain that same sex attraction is a genetic predisposition. This is disputed. Even if it were the case, that does not give homosexual activity any more of a claim to being given a special civil rights status. Should we really give disordered appetites civil rights status under the law? Let’s consider an absurd example. I have struggled most of my life with fighting obesity. I am on the “winning end” lately, but just give me another Holiday! A very good argument can be made that obesity also has a genetic predisposition. However, I will fight it my whole life because it is unhealthy. It is a disordered appetite. Should we as a Nation decide that fat people have a civil right to be fat? Should those who insist that they resist that “genetic predisposition” to overeat be called Fata-phobic?
Disordered appetites - and the actions engaged in by those who give into them – simply should not be called civil rights. Certainly, those who succumb to them should be treated with the human dignity that they deserve and not be discriminated against. However, that is because they are human not because of their behavior! Homosexual sexual acts are simply homosexual sexual acts. Our bodies do not lie, they speak the language written within their constitution and confirmed in the Natural Law which binds us all.
Marriage between a man and a woman, intended for life, open to children, and the family founded upon it, is not up for grabs. Nor is it an antiquated institution. It is the first society, first government, first school, first economy and first church. Strong marriages and the families founded upon them pave the path to the future. Continuing efforts to use the Police Power of the State to give the same legal status as a marriage to homosexual paramours and force the entire society to recognize their relationships as equivalent to a marriage do not serve the common good.
I made similar comments in a past article. In response, one homosexual activist responded, “Deacon Keith Fournier you are an under-evolved societal retard. But don’t worry. Progressive thinking will sweep you, and all those like you, away.” It is interesting that he did not engage the claims I made or my positions. Rather, he resorted to personal attacks. I do not share his assessment of my place on his evolutionary cycle. I find his use of derogatory language used to insult our neighbors who are learning disabled to be offensive. But most importantly I absolutely reject the claim that people who want to eliminate true marriage by attempting to change its definition are the “progressives’ of the current age.
Homosexual activists who oppose marriage - and that is precisely what the so called “Marriage Equality” or “Freedom to Marry” movement actually does - are the ones who want to turn the clock back and impede progress. They are “Regressives” not “Progressives.” The foundation for the real progress made in Western civilization is partly because of the special recognition and place given to the first society of the family. That family is founded upon authentic marriage between one man and one woman. It is the first mediating institution of civil society. Marriage and family ground our organizing vision of the broader society and informs our philosophy of governance, including the proper place of the principle of subsidiarity, deferring to the family first.
Marriage has been given this privileged and protected legal and social status for a good reason, it serves the common good. It is the primary civilizing institution, constituted for the bearing and caring of children in an environment wherein they can best be nurtured, loved, socialized, schooled in the virtues and prepared for life in broader communities. Marriage has long been accepted as having been revealed in the Natural Law. Yes, religious traditions, including my own, build upon that Natural Law through revelation. However, the effort to call the Catholic insistence upon protecting marriage as between a man and a woman a “religious” position in order to marginalize and dismiss the argument is at best disingenuous and at worst anti-religious bigotry.
Should Disordered Appetites be Civil Rights? The answer is a resounding “No!”
Two Reforms Associated with Pentecost: The Vigil and the Octave
Posted in article, miscellaneous on May 31st, 2009
One of the matters of interest for liturgical study and consideration today surrounds two particular liturgical reforms which pertain to the Feast of Pentecost. One pertains to the usus antiquior and the other to the calendar of the modern Roman liturgy.
With regard to the usus antiquior, I refer to the reforms applied to the vigil of Pentecost, which Gregory DiPippo presented in part 7 of his series on the Holy Week reforms of Pius XII, The Vigil of Pentecost and the Readings from Sacred Scripture in Holy Week. Here he compares the pre-1955 Vigil as well as the revisions to it, noting, for example, the relation of vigil of Pentecost with that of Easter, including the recitation of six prophecies, the blessing of the baptismal font and the penitential character in which the Vigil begins. It suffices to simply point you to Gregory’s summation of this rather than summarize it again here.
However, it is with regard to the modern Roman liturgy that we see a matter of probably wider liturgical interest; namely, the suppression of the ancient octave of Pentecost from the modern Roman calendar — an octave being the extended liturgical celebration of a particular feast for a period of eight days.
Now it should be noted that the question of the reduction of octaves is not uniquely post-conciliar; it should likewise be noted that the modern calendar still maintains octaves for the Nativity and Easter. This noted, the suppression of that of Pentecost has remained a matter of some particular discussion and should be a point of consideration and further study for the reform of the reform today.
Of course, the concept and history of an octave will likely be foreign to many, so a more generalized consideration may be useful:
In the fourth century, when the primitive idea of the fifty days’ feast of the paschal time began to grow dim, Easter and Pentecost were given octaves. Possibly at first this was only a baptismal custom, the neophytes remaining in a kind of joyful retreat from Easter or Pentecost till the following Sunday. Moreover, the Sunday which, after the feasts of Easter and Pentecost, fell on the eighth day, came as a natural conclusion of the seven feast days after these two festivals.
[...]
The liturgy of the octave assumed its present form slowly. In the first period, that is from the fourth to the sixth and even seventh century, little thought seems to have been given to varying the liturgical formulæ during the eight days. The sacramentaries of Gelasius and St. Gregory make no mention of the intervening days; on the octave day the office of the feast is repeated. The dies octava is indeed made more prominent by the liturgy. The Sunday following Easter (i.e. Sunday in albis) and the octave day of Christmas (now the Circumcision) are treated very early as feast days by the liturgy. Certain octaves were considered as privileged days, on which work was forbidden. The courts and theatres were closed (”Cod. Theod.”, XV, tit. v de spect. leg. 5; IX, de quæst. leg. 7; “Conc. Mog”, 813, c. xxxvi). After Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas had received octaves, the tendency was to have an octave for all the solemn feasts. Etheria speaks of the feast of the Dedication (cf. Cabrol, op. cit., pp. 128-9). Theodomar, a contemporary of Charlemagne, speaks only of the octaves of Christmas and the Epiphany but it must not be concluded that he was ignorant of those of Easter and Pentecost, which were more celebrated.
[...]
The capitularies of Charlemagne speak of the octaves of Christmas, the Epiphany, and Easter. Amalarius, after mentioning the four octaves of Christmas, the Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, tells us that it was customary in his time to celebrate the octaves of the feasts of Sts. Peter and Paul and other saints… At the time of the reformation of the Breviary (Breviary of St. Pius V, 1568) the question of regulating the octaves was considered. Two kinds of octaves were distinguished, those of feasts of our Lord, and those of saints and the dedication. In the first category are further distinguished principal feasts — those of Easter and Pentecost, which had specially privileged octaves, and those of Christmas, the Epiphany, and Corpus Christi, which were privileged (the Ascension octave was not privileged). Octaves, which exclude all or practically all occurring; and transferred feasts, are called privileged.
Source: Catholic Encyclopedia, “Octave”
Octaves then, provided an emphasis to festal days of particular importance within the liturgical year. (As an aside, readers particularly interested in this subject may also like to read the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on the Octavarium Romanum, “a liturgical book which may be considered as an appendix to the Roman Breviary, but which has not the official position of the other Roman liturgical books” and which intended to “introduce a greater variety in the selection of lessons… to each day of the octaves.”)
The quotation above comes from 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia. In 1955, with the decree, Cum hac nostra aetate, a reform of the octaves was undertaken during the pontificate of Pius XII, which reduced the number of octaves to three: the Nativity, Easter and Pentecost. The remaining octaves were suppressed. (e.g. the octaves of the Ascension, Epiphany, Corpus Christi, and so on.) So it was and is still today in the present day calendar of the usus antiquior.
As regards the calendar of the modern Roman liturgy, these reforms were to be followed with the removal of the octave of Pentecost in addition, thus leaving two octaves: that of the Nativity and Easter. Accordingly, what was (and is in the usus antiquior) a week of the liturgical colour of red — which liturgical colour of course relates to the Holy Spirit — focused upon this great feast of the Church and the Holy Spirit, became one of green, with the days of the octave of Pentecost turning into days simply of “Ordinary Time.”
While this is a matter which is fundamentally tied to the need for liturgical study and ecclesial authority, it may do well, particularly as we sit upon the very time itself, to leave off with a practical suggestion for parish priests wishing to recover some sense of the octave, even within the present circumstances of the modern Roman calendar. For those to whom this applies, they may wish to consider Fr. Thomas Kocik’s suggestion from his piece, The Reform of the Reform: What Can We Do Now?:
Although, lamentably, the Octave of Pentecost does not exist in the Ordinary Form, there is nothing to prevent the offering of the Votive Mass of the Holy Spirit (and thus the use of red vestments) on the ferial days after Pentecost Sunday.
Just A Note
Posted in miscellaneous on May 28th, 2009When I was taking in the news from the various media (spanning the spectrum of possible media), I learned about Pope Benedict XVI’s new Internet endeavor. I was very excited! But when I typed in “pope2u” in my address bar, something else came up - a site with anti-Catholic links!! Beware…one of the links was for Holy Family Monastary, hard-line sedevacantists. The REAL link is http://www.pope2you.com . Awesome site.
Facing The New Fascism
Posted in article, miscellaneous on May 26th, 2009BY Jennifer Morse Roback, Ph.D.
May 31-June 6, 2009 Issue of NC Register
The premise of Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism is that the socialist or liberal left frequently uses the tactics of the fascist right. Some liberals are so convinced of the correctness of their cause that they think themselves entitled to the use of any methods, no matter how illiberal, to advance that cause. In the aftermath of the California voters’ passage of Proposition 8, the new fascist mindset is on display in living Technicolor, or maybe I should say in rainbow color.
California voters rejected the darling social cause of the fashionable elites: same-sex “marriage.” The election procedures were undeniably fair: After all, this is the electorate that voted for Obama by landslide margins. Did I say that? Obama won by 52% of the popular vote nationwide: the exact same percentage that voted for Proposition 8. So the homosexual lobby must find some other pretext for undoing the outcome of a fair election. Please observe the tactics:
1. Get the judiciary to overturn the election on a technicality: Proposition 8 was not an amendment at all, but a “revision” to the California Constitution.
If they really believe this argument, they should have asked to throw it out before it ever got on the ballot. Both sides were in court, back in July, when Jerry Brown was rewriting the title of the initiative in order to sink its chances of passing. That would have been a good time to bring up the subject of “revision vs. amendment” — before the two sides spent more than $70 million on an election.
2. Delegitimize the vote itself. Keep repeating the lie that all the pro-Prop. 8 arguments were lies. Make people ashamed of having voted for Prop. 8. Keep fighting the same election over and over until people give up and let you win out of sheer exhaustion.
The “No” team had an entire election cycle, with lots of money, to try to convince people to reject our arguments. They don’t seem to accept the fact that they don’t get forever to try to make their case.
3. Intimidate people. If all else fails, scare people. March in the streets in large numbers. Pick out defenseless targets. Don’t protest in working-class neighborhoods, even though working-class people voted strongly for Prop. 8. Demonstrate against Mormons instead. Target Prop. 8 donors, even people who gave as little as $100. Hound them out of their jobs. And while you’re at it, attack some little old ladies carrying crosses (Google Palm Springs Prop. 8 Rally Turns Ugly to find the YouTube clip). Grab their crosses and throw them on the ground and stomp on them.
These are not liberal tactics. These are strong-armed, bullying tactics, better suited to certain European countries in the 1930s and ’40s than to America in the 21st century.
4. Demonize your opponents. Blame all your troubles on an unpopular or mysterious religious minority. If only the Mormons hadn’t spent so much time and money for Prop. 8, it would not have passed. Therefore, the whole election is suspect.
And while you’re in the scapegoating business, go ahead and blame the racial minorities who voted for Prop. 8 in overwhelming numbers. Homosexual bloggers have reported the “liberal” use of the “n word” at some of the protests: white homosexuals blaming black homosexuals because “their community” voted against them.
The homosexual activist lobby doesn’t understand that the rest of the world does not view same-sex “marriage” as the ultimate civil rights issue. Members of the liberal black community are trying to explain this to the homosexual lobby (Google No on 8’s White Bias to find the L.A. Times article on the subject), but I doubt they will get it. They seem to be committed to the time-honored strategy of political radicals everywhere: assume the conclusion. Repeat it loud enough and often enough and you may not ever have to make an actual argument for it.
Now, I am certainly aware that not all homosexuals and lesbians agree with all the tactics adopted by activist leaders who claim to represent them. Some homosexuals and lesbians even voted Yes on Prop. 8. I know these “gay dissenters” exist, because they send me e-mails.
And I feel sure that most of the people who voted No on Prop. 8 are not radicals of any kind, certainly not liberal fascists. Most probably cast their vote for fairness, tolerance and treating others nicely.
But the homosexual lobby is now being grossly unfair to the voters of California by trying to replace the results of a fair election with a combination of mob tactics and raw judicial power. The homosexual activist lobby is being intolerant of people who disagree with them, by deliberately inciting hatred against a religious minority. And as for treating others nicely, well, where I come from, assaulting little old ladies and hounding people out of their jobs does not count as being nice.
So I ask the more than 6 million Californians who voted No on Prop. 8: Is this really what you meant to vote for? And I ask everyone watching the behavior of the California homosexual activists: Is this a group of people that needs more power?
American voters have consistently supported marriage between a man and a woman. Voters will not forget the homosexual lobby’s strong-arm tactics in California. In the next round of deliberations over same-sex “marriage,” voters will reject these tactics every bit as much as same-sex “marriage” itself.
We don’t want this type of political extremism in America.
Jennifer Roback Morse is the founder
and president of the Ruth Institute,
an educational project of the
National Organization for Marriage.
