Jimmy Akin on same-sex “marriage”

(The following is a closely-approximate transcription of his answer given to a caller on "Catholic Answers Live" on Thursday November 20, 2008 (3:00 PM hour), show ID # CA-3992 [time reference 40:45 / 55:01]. If you click on that link and queue up the time-slider thingy at the bottom of the Real Audio player that appears, you can listen and read along at the same time. Neato!)


Caller (Vic): My question is with respect to homosexual or same-sex “marriages”. I was debating with a friend regarding his idea that, well, marriage is simply an institution for those who love each other, which seems kind of whimsical because … then anyone should be able to enter into it with … [Jimmy chuckles and interjects: “Oh yeah, parents could marry their children then, if it’s just about loving people.”] Yeah. So someone informed me about an article by a Robert P. George or somebody, with respect to how marriage was never intended to be an issue of the rights of the adults — like well, let’s grant rights just to a male and a female — but it was about the needs of the child, and the benefit of the community in which this child would be beared [sic] and reared with them. So my question is about the Catholic view on that, because he is kind of attacking my faith quite vigorously with that.

Jimmy: OK, this can be approached in a couple of different ways. Marriage does involve the good of the spouses. If you look in the Code of Canon Law and the Catechism of the Catholic Church it’ll say that “the ends of marriage are the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring” … umm … so those are both … goals, and the Church has had a clearer awareness in recent times of the importance of the good of the spouses, that’s something that really has developed in the last couple of decades. But what you can’t do is say, “Oh, well, it would be good for me and my ‘boy-pal’ to get married …um… and fulfill that end of marriage” … and leave the other undone, you know … just as with contraception, you can’t separate the unitive and the procreative aspects [of the marital act], you also can’t separate the good of the spouses from an openness to children. And you are doing that if you are entering a union that by its nature is intrinsically incapable of producing children. (That’s different than a union that for some external reason, some extrinsic reason, can’t produce them, like when the couple is advanced in age or something like that, or they have a medical condition so that they can’t conceive.) If you’ve got two men or two women together … there’s just a difference in their union.

There’s also a problem in that it’s really not good for them. It doesn’t foster the good of the parties if the two people are of the same sex. They may enjoy it on some level; they may say they are deriving benefit from it — but on a fundamental level, they’re not. They’re really harming each other. So neither of the purposes of marriage is going to be fulfilled through a homosexual union.

You can also look at the question another way, and say, well okay, fundamentally, marriage is — I mean, the way the term has historically been used — it refers to a union of a man and a woman oriented towards the procreation and education of offspring. Fine. Suppose you change the meaning of the word. Are you changing the fact that a union between a man and a woman oriented to the procreation and education of offspring is different than any other union? No you’re not. That reality remains the same. The reality of marriage is the fact that there is a union between a man and a woman that is oriented to children, both their production and education. If you stretch the term “marriage” like Silly Putty to refer to other things, you’re not changing the fact that that man-woman union is unique. All you’re doing is obfuscating the fact that it’s unique, but you’re not changing the underlying reality. The underlying reality is a man and a woman can get together in a particular kind of union and do something that two men, or two women, or … a person and a tractor … cannot do together. So all you’re doing is confusing the issue by pretending that something is like the union of a man and a woman, which it’s not. And that just detaches us from reality, it gums up public policy, it devalues the actual uniqueness of the man-woman union, and it will mislead people into thinking that they are married when they’re not, and it will confirm them in a destructive lifestyle that will ultimately harm them in this life and in the next. And that is not loving.


[And that's why he's the PROFESSIONAL apologist, and I'm just a rank AMATEUR! --G/F]

Life is like ... Faith is like ...

Life is like a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle

Suppose you'd never seen a jigsaw puzzle before, nor even heard of one. When you first dump it out of the box it looks like mass confusion. But with a little imagination and effort you begin to see that what at first seemed like a big pile of random shapes actually might fit together.

There are two ways to put it together. One way is to put it together backwards (i.e. what we would call upside-down). This is possible, of course, but extremely difficult, since it appears all gray and meaningless. But it gives you something to do, and might even prove how "intelligent" and clever you are because you are able to fit together meaningless pieces.

The other way is to turn the pieces over at the beginning to reveal the "picture" side. This makes putting the pieces together much easier, more interesting and delightful, it tends to draw other people in to enjoy and share in the project of assembling the pieces. You discover as time goes on, bit by bit, an interesting and meaningful picture begins to emerge that pleases the whole person, body and spirit, because the effort of doing the puzzle pays off in the accomplishment of the meaningful task, and the final result is a picture that everyone around you can enjoy both in its details and its overall beauty.


Faith is like the way Adrian Monk solves a case

Have you ever seen the show "Monk" on TV (USA Network [cable], Fridays 9-10 pm, and repeat episodes at other times and On Demand)? It's listed as a "comedy drama", and is suitable for children.

At the beginning of many an episode, someone dies, and you don't always know who, if anyone, is at fault. After the theme music and opening credits, the San Francisco Police are shown going over the scene. Mr. Monk and his lovely assistant show up and, if he has something else on his mind (which is often the case), Mr. Monk says, "There's no mystery here; it was all just an accident."

But then he starts to notice things here and there, an object that seems out of place or a casual remark someone makes, that suggest that it might be something more than an accident. Then, as he pokes around, it becomes clear that someone knows more than he's telling.

In time, his investigation leads him to point someone out and say, "He's the guy! I know he did it. I just don't know how he did it ..."

Everyone around him remains skeptical, coming up with one reasonable excuse or another why he's wrong, until in the end the final clue is revealed and all the pieces fall into place. The final explanation is given and all the former skeptics say, "Of course! It was right there all along. Why couldn't we see it before?"

What started as "no mystery" then becomes a mystery of vital importance, and ends with a clear and satisfying explanation that makes everyone happy.

Everyone, that is, except the murderer. Roll the credits...

On Political Correctness

Part of the trouble with Political Correctness (there is much more) is that it has to be enforced politically (artificially) since it apparently does not stand up even to ordinary reason. If it did correspond to reason, that would make it true, not just “correct”. (E.g., “You’re not allowed to say that … In fact, it just might be a hate crime!”)

So the way I see it, the implication is that the kind of people who invent and insist on P.C. usage know that it is false (contrary to right reason), so they have to change the terms of the discussion and back it up with artificial peer pressure (demanding recognition of a non-existent duty not to offend and the non-existent “right” not to be offended) and, on occasion, the force of “law”.

The Comment Box is not a Chatter Box

JohnnyK (calling himself "The Truth" or "Not The Truth" at present) posted to my last blog entry about 70 comment entries over a period from July 3rd to 30th in what amounted to a VERY LONG and uniteresting monologue of New Age (or something like it) nonsense.
[When copied-and-pasted to Word document format and compressed to 8-point Ariel font and minimal .5 inch margins, the thing still ran to over 30 pages! Incredible.]

He seems to rely on my sense of "fair play" in not deleting him outright. But since he does not respect the norms of courtesy for me or my little corner of cyberspace, I feel no obligation to treat him with even the barest civility. My policy for him is to ban & delete without warning. Soon (I hope) he will get the message and stop trying. (I am reminded of the knife fight scene from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" where "no rules" means NO rules.)

The contorted "logic" of his views and endless non sequitur "word-play" takes tedium to bold new extremes. It is absolutely opaque. I have stated many times before now that he is free to post his verbal dysentery elsewhere, but not here. If he does find some other cyber-spot to unload on, he has the option of e-mailing me privately and (in 100 words or less) asking me nicely to post a LINK here to his drivel. I might consider it. Then anyone who cares to can follow the link and read it.

On the other hand, if God knocks him off his horse and he has a conversion back to something resembling coherent thought, he can e-mail me privately about that too (in 100 words or less) and I might consider readmitting him to this forum.

Mike Jones' new book

I thought I made a promise some time ago that I would announce particulars in this space when E. Michael Jones (editor of Culture Wars magazine) finally published his book on the "Revolutionary Jew". I can't find exactly where I made that promise (it might have been in a private e-mail), but here are the particulars nonetheless.

The title of the book is The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History. It is hot off the press and available only in hardcover at present. 1,200 pages; $48.00 plus $8 for S&H; order from Fidelity Press, 206 Marquette Ave., South Bend, IN 46617; ISBN 0-929891-07-4. It was reviewed by Robert Sungenis, Ph.D., in the current (May 2008) issue of Culture Wars Magazine (available for $4.00 single issue or by subscription (in U.S.) for $30 per year from the same address given above).

The Christian basis for human social progress – Part 3 (conclusion)

After an unexpected hiatus, the Blue Blazer returns to complete his 3-part series on the seeming contradiction of the Progressive attacks on Christian values.

Why do “Progressives” seek to undermine the cultural heritage of Western culture, particularly those that relate to Christianity? Why would they do this when those cultural elements also form the foundation of democracy and human rights—values that “progressives” hold so dear? I see three possible explanations. And I believe that each of these factors is at play on some people, but usually not at the same time for any individual.

The Culturally Gullible: Many people believe strongly in the progressive ideals while rejecting their Christian origins and principles (covered in Part 2). They do this not because of any inner conviction or personal experience, but rather because they have accepted, uncritically, a whole range of ideas that seem “acceptable” in popular media or the so-called “conventional wisdom.” Many of them take this gullibility a step further and thoughtlessly repeat criticism of the ideas that they hear criticized in popular media. Thus their beliefs about what is good or bad are not based upon personal conviction about good and evil, but upon what sounds good on the surface. Therefore, they frequently end up adopting an idea without any concept of its historic philosophic foundations. In other words, they “follow like sheep” or “jump on the bandwagon” to accept just about anything that seems popular (including unsupported cultural mythologies). They never question the post-Modern views of religion (and especially Christianity) promoted by various influential shapers of popular culture; ideas of religion as, at best, an annoying collection of “superstitions,” and at worst, an insidious source social evils, past and present.

Of course, while these people may accept foolish ideas out of ignorance, gullibility or laziness, they are not responsible for creating the distorted views in the first place. That requires active deception. And active deception comes in two types: subconscious and deliberate. The subconscious deceivers seek to avoid facing anything in life that is difficult or inconvenient. This means avoiding the challenging components of Christianity while openly embracing the warm and comforting components. This self-deceptive view of Christianity also requires an added deception—an act of hiding from their own motive which, like the gullible, is usually laziness. While I will touch on this second group briefly, I will focus most of my attention on the deliberate deceivers, those who consciously and carefully craft distortions and lies about history that will serve their vested interest in discrediting Christianity.

Subconscious Deceivers: In his bestselling book, The Road Less Traveled, psychologist M. Scott Peck describes the modern epidemic of self-deception: “Some of us will go to quite extraordinary lengths to avoid our problems [things that cause us discomfort or pain] and the suffering they cause, proceeding far afield from all that is clearly good and sensible in order to try to find an easy way out, building the most elaborate fantasies in which to live, sometimes to the total exclusion of reality.” Peck’s book, subtitled “A new psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth” provides striking evidence that everyone, to some extent, seeks to avoid responsibility for problems or challenges they face. Rather than taking responsibility to deal directly with problems and difficulties, it is tempting to avoid responsibility in various ways. Traditional religious values are an historic reminder of the challenges of being human with individual responsibility and accountability to follow a “good” or righteous path, even when it is difficult or inconvenient. Modern pop culture has embraced a god-less and self-centered ethos articulated by (but not invented by) Rousseau and Nietzsche. It is a self-perpetuating elevation of personal comfort and autonomy that became possible only with the development of modern technology that enabled leisure, learning, communication and social mobility and freedom—all of which, ironically, were the direct result of Christian influence on Western society (see Part 2). While the Church and the society under the influence of her ideals worked to promote learning, justice and freedom, she removed historic constraints of fear and ignorance that, while keeping people in poverty and oppression by the powerful, also applied constraints on the opportunities for self-absorption that is destructive to society.

With the primitive constraints on individual autonomy gone, it has become a “lifestyle choice” to either accept personal responsibility for promoting good in the society or to avoid responsibility when it is hard and opt for an easy out. Given the choice, it seems a growing number avoid the harder road of personal responsibility in favor of the easy course of taking as much as possible while giving as little as possible. Freedom thus becomes a popular concept (at long as it refers only to the freedom from duties, constraints or norms). “Justice” is the rallying cry to be used to claim something that somebody else has (but conveniently, justice is never mentioned when it would threaten my grip on what I have that others might claim). As more individuals have succumbed to these distortions of the Christian values of freedom and justice, the more the distorted versions are viewed as “mainstream” in popular culture, further reinforcing the ideas in a self-perpetuating spiral. And it is not surprising that the basic Christian values of freedom and justice (and likewise peace and love), when redefined from their theistic root meaning, can be elevated by someone who simultaneously attacks Christianity and its basic world view.

Deliberate Deceivers: Not all deception is subconscious, however (though most self-deception appears to be subconscious). In fact, the growth of the anti-religious and uber-autonomistic culture would not be possible without a conscious and deliberate program of deception by people in positions of influence and authority. The evidence for that is that there are those who willfully discard or reconstruct institutions that have proven successful in conserving and advancing society; while replacing them with unproven and clearly anti-intuitive substitutes. Education and science are two examples of institutions that have been transformed from institutions for preserving and advancing social goals of individual freedom and progress, into institutions for influencing social change and control of resources and political and social power—a direct contradiction to their espoused purposes. The aim of these deceivers is not a society in which all members of society share equally in freedoms protected by an equal share in the responsibilities of a social contract. Instead, it is a society run by the “enlightened” who use political power and control of social institutions to meet their own needs at the expense of a cultural underclass, dependent upon them. Today’s so-called “progressive” rhetoric must always be tested to see if it is consistent with the society’s espoused values, or not. The test will frequently reveal a carefully crafted deception to promote a different society altogether—an oligarchy of the powerful who control an underclass through monopoly power over economic resources and social institutions. It should be clear that that oligarchic model is an all-too-familiar fixture in human experience. It has been checked only where Judeo/Christian ideas of human equality under the law have flourished (basically only in Europe and the West since gaining hold in the Middle Ages and Renaissance). Because Christian ideals and education have been the only force to ever overthrow the “law of the jungle,” those who would rule for their own aggrandizement must discredit or destroy Christianity.

There is a group among so-called progressives, who are intent upon more than claiming autonomy and sovereignty over themselves. They wish to claim sovereignty over others too. To claim this sovereignty, they must be thoroughly committed to undermine Christianity. But because imposed sovereignty is inconsistent with the very values of Western Culture inculcated by Christians, there is danger in pushing this agenda openly. Instead they have learned from earlier failures of fascist and communist regimes that direct confrontation will not succeed. Instead, they patiently chip away at the West’s Christian foundation while claiming to embrace its progressive values. This seeming contradiction is not hard to explain. They conveniently embrace the parts of the Christian message that support their agenda, but they cannot embrace the totality of the Christian world view (such as equal dignity for all). But Christianity is a holistic world view that acknowledges a reality that cannot be dismembered. It includes hope and optimism, but it also recognizes weakness and demands responsibility. For those who want freedom to do what they want, without any personal responsibility, it is not pleasant to accept the whole of human experience that Christianity imparts. It must be picked apart. And those who know or suspect the power of Christianity realize that, if they are to pick it apart, they must first destroy it.

I do not consider the culturally gullible to be cause of the progressive threat to freedom and human rights. If anything they are the most pitiable victims. They are manipulated into the destruction of the culture that allows them the luxury of blissful ignorance. They have become the pawns of the few deliberate deceivers who seek to derail the journey of Western Culture and return to a culture of deceptive domination in which “Some are more equal than others.” It is a culture that cannot coexist where a divine creator is acknowledged, especially the God who bestows dignity to all as He reveals Himself through the values of the Torah, the prophets and the Gospel.