UPDATE
Dreadnought whitewashes the Spanish Inquisition as follows: "many of the most outrageous figures claimed, and most of the more gruesome images of torture and stake-burnings, derive from Northern European, Protestant, and Anglo-Saxon propaganda." "The same individuals who would not have hesitated to burn a Catholic for 'Popish superstitions' often also wrote anti-Inquisition propaganda." "The mostly nationalistic Spanish Inquisition was actually put down by Rome". The latter point at least is incorrect. One need look no further than the old Catholic Encyclopedia: "King Joseph Bonaparte abrogated it in 1808, but it was reintroduced by Ferdinand VII in 1814 and approved by Pius VII on certain conditions, among others the abolition of torture. It was definitely abolished by the Revolution of 1820."
Wikipedia has:
"The Inquisition was abolished during the domination of Napoleon and the reign of Joseph I (1808–1812). In 1813, the liberal deputies of the Cortes of Cadiz also obtained its abolition, largely as a result of the Holy Office's condemnation of the popular revolt against French invasion. But the Inquisition was reconstituted when Ferdinand VII recovered the throne on July 1, 1814. It was again abolished during the three year Liberal interlude known as the Trienio liberal. Later, during the period known as the Ominous Decade, the Inquisition was not formally re-established, although, de facto, it returned under the so-called Meetings of Faith, tolerated in the dioceses by King Ferdinand. These had the dubious honour of executing the last heretic condemned, the school teacher Cayetano Ripoll, garroted in Valencia on July 26, 1826 (presumably for having taught deist principles), all amongst a European-wide scandal at the despotic attitude still prevailing in Spain... The Inquisition was definitively abolished on July 15, 1834, by a Royal Decree signed by regent Maria Cristina de Borbona liberal queen, during the minority of Isabel II and with the approval of the President of the Cabinet Francisco Martinez de la Rosa. (It is possible that something similar to the Inquisition acted during the First Carlist War, in the zones dominated by the Carlists, since one of the government measures praised by Conde de Milina Carlos Maria Isidro de Borbon was the re-implementation of the Inquisition to protect the Church)."
As to the death toll: "the Inquisition had burned at the stake 2,000 people and reconciled another 15,000 by 1490 (just one decade after the Inquisition began)." "the annual relations of all processes between 1560 and 1700. This material provides information about 49,092 judgements... only 1.9% of those processed - approximately 933 - were burned at the stake." "the Inquisition was most active in the period between 1480 and 1530, and that during this period the percentage condemned to death was much more significant than in [1560-1700]" "García Cárcel estimates that the total number processed by the Inquisition throughout its history was approximately 150,000. Applying the percentages of executions that appeared in the trials of 1560-1700—about 2%—the approximate total would be about 3,000 put to death. Nevertheless, very probably this total should be raised keeping in mind the data provided by Dedieu and García Cárcel for the tribunals of Toledo and Valencia, respectively. It is likely that the total would be between 3,000 and 5,000 executed. Other documents, discovered in the Vatican Archives in 2004 put the toll of heresy cases tried by the Spanish Inquisition between 1540 and 1700 at 44,647, of which 1.8% (804) led to an execution, while another 1.7% were burned in effigy because they had somehow escaped before the sentence was carried out. However, it is impossible to determine the precision of this total, and owing to the gaps in documentation, it is unlikely that the exact number will ever be known."
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UPDATE:
I see that Dreadnought is up to his libelous smear tactics again, this time against a priest of his own diocese: http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2008/07/dreadclarity-peter-confeggi-priest.html
I see that Australians have perfected the art of fisking Dreadnought and resisting his fascist ideology:
Hi John,
Briefly, my response –
“self-appointed activists, on the extreme fringe of the wider community, have hijacked the "gay marriage" debate to manufacture a false sense of grassroots support.”
Your claim in your Herald Sun was that self-appointed activists on the extreme fringe of the gay community had hijacked the debate, not the wider community. This was quite obvious and consistent throughout- if not why was the article titled “Gays don’t want marriage”?
“He then cited, apparently against my contention, the findings of two surveys set-up, paid for, administered and disseminated by "gay marriage" lobby groups.”
One of these, the Victorian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby “Not Yet Equal” survey was conducted by the very same people (Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria) who collected the information for the La Trobe “Private Lives” study from which you so often quote and respondents were sought through the same avenues in both cases- how then is one valid and the other corrupted?
“the Sydney Star Observer- a gay rights publication with an avowed "gay marriage" agenda.”
We are not a gay rights publication- we are a CAB audited newspaper serving the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered community in New South Wales and elsewhere. We have published articles and letters from those both for and against the idea of gays getting married- though we do not get nearly as many from those against and very few of those who have written that they see no value in marriage have suggested this is a reason that others should be prevented from marrying as you have.
“His article cannot, therefore, rebut my Herald Sun piece” [1]–
My article rebutted your Herald Sun piece by showing step by step that you had misrepresented the data that your case relied on and that your having next to nothing in common with the majority of gay men and lesbians undermined your credibility in attempting to speak for a supposed silent majority amongst them. It did this quite successfully.
You seem to have a great deal of difficulty understanding this sort of data as you are currently misrepresenting another poll on your blog from the DNA Magazine website which you claim shows, “89% of respondents said that "marriage is not for me”.
In fact that poll (still open) shows that 68% of respondents think marriage is for them, and of the 32% who say it’s not for them 88% (your 89%) said they still supported its legalisation and only 12% said gay marriage should not be legalised.
That you truncated the quote (the full quote from the second set of questions being “marriage is not for be but I believe same sex marriage should be allowed- 89% [now 88%]) suggests something more sinister- that you are willfully and deliberately misleading people.
“My actual statements on transsexuals are, as one would imagine, less about stigma, and denigration, and more about the need for understanding”
Comments you make in responding to readers on your website are as “actual” statements by you as ones you make elsewhere. You twice referred to transgendered people as suffering “serious” mental disorders in that discussion. It is entirely valid for me to quote you.
“The first mainstream article I had published was actually a pro Brokeback Mountain opinion editorial in The Australian and the second was an opinion editorial in the same paper decrying homophobia [defending conservative commentator Alan Jones].”
I never claimed that you would have never published an article in a mainstream publication without latching onto this issue. However I do believe this issue has given you a higher profile than you would have otherwise attained were it already settled, and if gay and lesbian Australians were already equal in all areas of the law, your opinion as a non-practicing gay man on gay issues would be of little interest to a mainstream audience other than as a contrarian oddity.
“In an earlier version of his piece, Potts called me a "Catholic robot"
That article was published on another website where you will also be publishing a reply- how about you deal with what has been written here, here and what has been written there, there?
“Comments elsewhere have suggested that I might be HIV positive (I am not), someone who has experienced child sex abuse at the hands of a priest and enjoyed that abuse (I have not been abused, and the suggestion is highly offensive/insensitive), and/or that I have regularly been seen at sex-on-site venues, picking up male prostitutes (again, untrue).”
I made none of those comments, nor would I make such comments, and have no knowledge of who did. Why bring them up here other than to paint yourself as victim where you have not been so attacked by me or by anyone else on New Matilda? You might also note that when one such suggestion was made in the comments section of the SameSame article I let that person know it was inappropriate.
That being said, when you actively work against the rights and aspirations of the community you claim to belong to, does it surprise you that other members of that community are affronted and offended?
“If I were as isolated and opposed as Potts claims, I’d never get a hearing. I wouldn’t deserve one.”
Many fringe opinions get a hearing in this society- often attaining a novelty value because they are so isolated and opposed- for example you may have seen a father-daughter couple plead for understanding of their incestuous relationship through a range of media not so long ago- if they can get a hearing, I’m quite confident that you as a gay man who doesn’t believe in gay men consummating their relationships can too without being representative of anything other than yourself.
“Certainly it is - to counter Potts’s most earnest claim - difficult to argue that people who oppose "gay marriage" are somehow rare, obscure types”
It is quite difficult to argue that those in the wider Australian community who oppose gay marriage are rare (though they are now a minority- albeit a very large one). Arguing that those who oppose gay marriage are rare in the gay community is not difficult- because they are rare.
Regards,
Andrew M. Potts
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to respond to messages here. If readers have any remaining (genuine) questions about my writing, and ideas - or they want to constructively discuss any point further - please send me an email direct.
Hi John,
It’s a pity you’re not prepared to take the time to engage with New Matilda readers through the comments section as most other writers for this site choose to do so.
Some might find it interesting to hear you acknowledge your deception in quoting the DNA poll, or hear you explain why the La Trobe study is valid while the VGLRL study is contaminated despite both being conducted by the same people.
Perhaps you’re more interested in obfusciation and painting yourself as a victim than actually answering valid criticisms?
Regards,
Andrew M. Potts
John
Andrew Potts provided a well thought out response to your Herald Sun piece. Unfortunately, you have not done similar in response. Generally, your writing is convoluted and lacking in any real substance. You constantly fail to address critical comments but rather attack the writer. When someone questions your use of statistics or polls rather than rationally deal with the criticism you make a comment like:
"Finally, Potts’s interpretation of the findings of the Private Lives report is not convincing. The report is online for anyone to read"
Hardly, a rebuttal!
In one sense I am thankful that you have entered the arena in this debate because in my opinion you will convince less people of your position than you will convert. However, on the other hand I hope you are not given too much oxygen as a so called writer as it can divert attention away from the real issues of equality.
I am happy that you are catholic and love your god. Just please don’t seek to impose your choice on me. I certainly don’t want to impose mine on yours. Yes, that is right, you don’t have to get married if you don’t want too….and I think that is fine! But I DO want to get married and I DO want my son to have his fathers both legally recognised. It wont harm you one iota. So please John, keep your oppression and your religion away from my family.
Regards
Rodney Cruise
DNA Magazine have now published a notice on their website alerting readers to Heard’s misuse of their poll data and confirming that his interpretation of what they meant was factually incorrect.
DNA: "We recently ran two polls on the DNA website asking two questions about gay marriage, with the results of both showing a large majority were in favour of gay marriage – for themselves and for society. The polls were run in response to a newspaper article by ‘conservative Catholic gay writer’ John Heard, claiming “ordinary, same sex-attracted Australians” are not behind the push for gay marriage."
"Our polls were then cited by Heard on his blog, with him concluding that 89 per cent of our respondents had said marriage was not for them. Whether he inadvertently or deliberately misinterpreted the results, Heard is mistaken in his analysis of these DNA polls."
"The results showed that 68 per cent of respondents would marry their same-sex partner if they could, while the remaining 32 per cent would not, even if they could.
We then asked only that minority of people who said they would not marry if they could if they supported the idea of gay marriage for others – with 88 per cent saying they supported the idea for others."
(http://www.dnamagazine.com.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=5735&c=51210)
Heard also planned to publish another rebuttal on SameSame.com.au- a gay community website that also published my New Matilda article. He has now declined to do so.
Which means pretty soon he’ll be disparaging DNA and SameSame as "homoactivist" forums where different points of view (in other words, homocontrarian dogma that bears no resemblance to the hopes, dreams, needs and wants of GLBT Australians) are "silenced". He really is that intellectually shameless. Just wait and watch.
Having been made aware of his error, Heard is now claiming on his website that DNA misunderstood their own poll data.
EARLIER UPDATES:
Listening to Dreadnought talking to an enchanted audience on being "eunuchs for the kingdom", I note he is most hard pressed when faced with the question of predominantly gay men marrying women. The doctrine that gays must be eunuchs of course will push many gay men into marriage in search of an approved sexual life as well as an approved social role.
On the Inquisition Dreadnought says that it was a Spanish nationalist phenomenon which the Vatican put a stop to. On the contrary, the Inquisition was REOPENED at the behest of the Vatican after the Spanish Government shut it down in the early 19th century. The Inquisition, notably the Roman Inquisition set up in the Counter-Reformation, was a central pillar of Catholic theology, law, polity, spirituality for seven centuries. Happily, Dreadnought sees it as evil, unlike many other Catholic apologists.
"Insert your penis into a digestive tract" is a phrase that rolls off Dreadnought's tongue again and again, and no one in the audience challenged this phenomenology of homosexual sexual interaction.
"There won't be a gay gene... There isn't a theft gene... if we focus on the act, not the general feeling, I find it implausible". His talk about genes as altering chemical structures shows that he should not be talking about biology at all. In fact it is the orientation, or general feeling, that is the most profound aspect of homosexuality, not the acts to which Dreadnought bizarrely seeks to reduce it. He says God does not make people gay, but only original sin and one's own weakness. He finds no closeness, intimacy, or affective complementarity between gay couples because of the lack of procreation. "It's all about sodomy" he chuckles. "The Church cannot be wrong about human nature. The Church says that homosexuality's psychological genesis remains unexplained but that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, since they close the sexual act to the gift of life and do not preceed from genuine affective complementarity. You can't rationally choose sodomy because it's not good for you. The inclination itself doesn't make sense in what God wants for us. We can't ignore the things that make us fully human." He is awfully sincere, awfully confused, and one feels, poignantly, that he is yet another young victim of undeveloped and abusive church teaching. He charmed his audience to bits. He is on a roll, just like the Ex-gay ministers who have since issued public apologies to their gullible followers, whom they damaged so much; see http://www.beyondexgay.com/artic...e/ busseeapology and http://a_musing.blogspot.com/2008/05/former-ex-gay-leaderinterviwed-on-gcn.html. The latter interview, with Ann Philips, tells of the joy she experienced when she thought she was helping gay people, and how she basked in their love. John Heard is in that phase now.
http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2008/04/dreadtalk-eunuchs-for-kingdom.html
Dreadnought had a piece recently in an Australian newspaper assuring the public that gays don't want to marry. He boasts that his article is the "most discussed", oblivious of the fact that the discussion is mostly a deluge of protest from gay men and particularly women, who claim that they would very much appreciate legal recognition of their relationships. http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/comments/0,22023,23687597-5000117,00.html and http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,23690162-5007146,00.html. The letters his article provoked do great credit to the common sense and indeed the courtesy of the Australian public.
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Here is a useful corrective of the views of Courage, an organization greatly admired by Dreadnought: http://catholicactionnetwork.org/dec05/documents/CourageFactSheet_001.pdf. Courage may differ from NARTH more than this article suggests, however. Dreadnought has written an eloquent piece on Newman as patron saint of what he calls same-sex attracted Christians: http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2008/05/dreadpublishing-being-heard-john-heard.html. (I understand that Newman was not buried in the same grave as Ambrose St. John, but in a parallel grave; the Oratory ignored his wishes on this. Digging up his bones now for the purposes of piety seems to me in horrendous bad taste.)
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Less happy is a recent sample of Dreadnought discourse: "Plain procreative sex is, in various ways, still good - even if it is neither cerebral nor particularly romantic. The trouble with homogenital acts, however, is that the procreative, the properly conjugal end of the sex organs is subverted. It doesn't matter how much you love your buddy, he's not going to fulfil his telos by virtue of you inserting your penis in his digestive tract." I am surprised that a gay man can write in this wooden way as if he were the most imperceptive of heterosexuals. Indeed, it is hermeneutically quite instructive, since it allows one to hypothesize that some of the many other people who write in this way may also be, in fact, gay. It is surely a weakness in his case for purely celibate gay relations that he has to discuss non-celibate ones in such a denigratory and falsifying fashion.
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Dreadnought's overriding passion would seem not be a sexual one but rather a craving for authority. He drools over the infallibility of the Church's teaching on homosexuality. Yet that teaching is not at all as clear and constant as he imagines. The Church has spoken of the homosexual orientation as distinct from sexual acts only recently -- Persona Humana in 1975 is the earliest document specifically addressing the issue. In the 20th Century the Church valorized sexual love for its unitive value in a way that it had never done before, and now it seems that an irrepressible development in Catholic thinking is extending this valorization to homosexual love as well. This does not please authoritarian personalities, who want the Church to be firm and stiff (so perhaps there is a sexual dimension to their passion after all?).
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I note that Dreadnought (with encouragement from Philip Blosser and Clayton Emmer) has been writing letters to bishops all over the world – with scant regard for their busy schedules – in a bid to have me silenced (so much for Australian commitment to freedom of opinion, freedom of speech, and academic freedom; it is all very reminiscent of D. H. Lawrence’s Kangaroo). Apparently he has started up an entire correspondence with Cardinal George Pell. Here again there is unconscious comedy as Dreadnought expresses horror at receiving replies to his dogmatic utterances: "Yes, replies. Sometimes up to twenty or thirty long comments awaited anyone foolish / charitable enough to attempt to engage Father O'Leary in orthodoxy." I recall that in typical young-fascist style Dreadnought quickly cut off the replies and closed down all debate.
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Heard accuses me denying the resurrection on the basis of my defence of one of John Paul II's favorite theologians' views on the subject. He falsely claims that I talked about his sexual life in a way unbecoming to a priest. What he means, as a link he gives explains, is that I queried the consistency between the louche rooftop photos of “gay dad couchant”, still accessible on his website, and the radical diatribes against “gay” culture that he feeds to his adepts. “The sexual innuendo I mentioned relates to his ad hominem attacks… regarding pictures I’ve posted here of my friend Gay Dad." Even Heard's admirers on Philip Blosser's site found those pictures to be pornography; I do not agree with them, but would rather categorize them as harmless erotica. This is a category alien to Heard -- pictures of naked men must be either works of art or pornography; he has no middle range of sexual perception. He seems to have no sexual categories except "sodomy" in the crude terms he uses above and "chastity" understood as total surrender to an absolute authority. He should attend more to the middle ground of relaxed sexual interest and affection. This is a rather serious scotoma and it explains a lot about the psychology of authoritianism and homophobia.
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In his comments on the US papal visit Dreadnought talks of people who “complain of being ‘burnt out’ by, and /or ‘chewed up and spat out’ of ‘the gay scene’.” Again, in his social vision of homosexuality, Dreadnought knows only two extremes: a totally promiscuous gay scene and a self-flagellating isolation. The vast majority of homosexuals live at neither extreme, but Dreadnought's sociology seems oblivious of their existence. The burn-out people experience from the gay scene could count as an argument for, not against, stable unions, but Dreadnought never addresses this, as if he were unable to understand it. He writes: “While a few homoactivists think that ‘gay marriage’ is a human right, and a most pressing issue, most good people disagree. Instead, the Pope spoke in very powerful terms about the transcendent nature of the human person”. Again two extremes are opposed, and there is no consideration of the possibility that the dignity of the human person is enhanced in the dignity of a loving relationship between two persons. He tells us of “a gay man who has been disenchanted with his church” but who was touched by the Pope: “When he looked at me, it felt like I was part of the church, like we are all part of the church, and that we all are important, no matter who we are.” This is taken to prove “how wrong homoactivists and others are when they claim that the Pope and bishops, those who exercise teaching / pastoral authority in the Catholic Church, are necessarily aloof from the lives of same sex attracted men and women.” Apart from the completely sentimental basis of the argument, this obscures the issue, which is not that of an alleged aloofness. No one would say that the great moral theologian Paul VI was aloof from married men and women. The issue is simpler: a doctrine that is unworkable and damaging in practice. Very patronizingly, indeed rather hilariously, Dreadnought asks us to “note also, the maturation in the Pope’s statements about marriage and the family. Moving from a focus on once-pressing particular threats to the institution, ‘gay marriage’ for instance, the Pope and the Vatican are broadening out the defence of marriage to include much more worrying phenomena, like the increase in non-marital, sexual cohabitation generally.” Well done, Pope Benedict, you are learning fast -- soon you will be as wise as Dreadnought! The Vatican has been thinking about marriage for a thousand years; a further maturation of Vatican discourse on homosexuality is something that might well be desiderated however, and that is slowly but surely taking place.
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MAIN TEXT
At a meeting of the NSW Law Society, Young Lawyers, in Martin Place, Sydney, on February 8, 2008, John Heard, aka Dreadnought, addressed the question: “Is Gay Marriage a Human Rights Issue?” as follows, http://johnheard.blogspot.com :
“It seems ‘gay marriage’ has become a human rights issue, but not because it is a human right. Rather, all this talk might actually harm the progress of human freedom.
“Why? The topic for discussion IS SAME SEX MARRIAGE A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE? Provides us with a quick answer.
“That question mark, right at the end, certainly alerts us to the fact that people are uneasy. No one, not even its loudest advocates and careful, sympathetic bodies like the Young Lawyers, seems to be convinced that ‘gay marriage’ really is a human right.
“That doesn’t go down well.
“Did good people ask Barack Obama, the black US presidential candidate, whether racial equality was a human rights issue? No! Anyone in his or her right mind, listening to the inner voice of conscience and compassion, knows that it is.
“Human rights are irresistible.
“Would the venerable Law Society of NSW have asked the millions who suffered in the past under tyranny and those who continue to cry out today for freedom of association, of religion, for the right to free speech, would anyone dare to ask these people if their precious freedoms are real?
“Absolutely not.
“Human rights are unmistakeable.
“If a vast majority of serious and compassionate people still doubt whether or not ‘gay marriage’ is a human right, then the answer is no. If all the major social institutions, both major political parties and every mainstream religion condemns ‘gay marriage’ then the answer is no. We wouldn’t be up here – G-d forbid – arguing about whether or not anti-Semitism were okay.
“It is not.
“So the fact that we are gathered here today under this banner indicates, right from the start, that no one really believes that ‘gay marriage’ is like racial equality, it is not a human right like freedom of association or free speech. Good people are right to doubt; it is not any kind of human right at all.”
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COMMENT: This argument of John Heard’s is a sophism. Moreover its premise is refuted by the facts of history. Very often things that most people today would regard as unquestionable, evident, irresistible human rights were not so regarded in the distant or even the recent past. The UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights, a postwar document, identifies such rights as freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, freedom from coercion in religion, freedom to propagate one’s religious beliefs. The Catholic Church did not recognize these rights historically, and in fact actively infringed them. Far from being self-evident and above question, these rights were not recognized by the foremost body of moral reflection in the Christian West. Even the right to personal freedom was not recognized, for as late as 1866 the Holy Office taught that slavery is not at all incompatible with natural and divine law (the declaration bears the papal signature). The right of people not to be imprisoned for adult consensual sex is still not recognized by the Catholic Church (Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual People, 1986) and was certainly more than questioned when it came up in legal struggles in Ireland and other countries.
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Since the Catholic Church recognizes the natural right to marriage, it should actually be an easy step to recognize that gays and lesbians have a right to partnerships that allow the human flourishing and constructive living that marriage allows heterosexuals, whether or not these partnerships are called marriage. This right is indeed being established and vindicated at the highest levels of European law and governance at this very time, and a great many Catholics approve of this. For the Vatican there is “no conceivable right” to legal protection of immoral actions, and moreover any equiparation of samesex relationships with marriage is seen as a threat to marriage itself; it is on this basis that a fierce, and largely successful, crusade is being conducted against civil partnership legislation in Italy, while the Spanish bishops are emerging as the foremost political opponents of the Zapatero government; if it falls, they may push for repeal of the gay marriage legislation in Spain. The hierarchical Church in these countries has shown itself willing to cast its lot with anitdemocratic forces or with the likes of Silvio Berlusconi (against the admirable Romano Prodi, perceived as a dangerous liberal).
Who would dare ask those released from oppression ‘if their precious freedoms are real’?, asks Heard. Now of course gays and lesbians who have taken advantage of civil partnership legislation would certainly have no doubt of the reality of the freedom now secured. That “Young Lawyers” in Sydney, probably sympathetic to the idea that gay marriage is a human right, put the idea forward in a dubitative form can hardly be read as a confession that they know it is not a human right. If I had never thought about it and someone asked me, “is there a natural right to marry?” I would hesitate before replying. Rights issues are never the knock-down unquestionable matters that Heard thinks they always are. The Rights of Man secured in the French and American Revolutions were innovative and consested. The Human Rights asserted by the UN were not recognized in the various fascist and communist regimes of the previous decades. To think that everybody knew in their hearts what these rights were is very naïve.
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John Heard continues:
“However, ‘gay marriage’ seems to have become – sadly – a human rights issue.
“Certainly, it distracts us as a community from more urgent problems.
“Because, as we come here today to debate a half-forgotten topic that the vast majority of Australians reject, in a city where Mardi Gras shrinks and HIV/AIDS infections too often rise in a world that faces many serious, pressing challenges, these other problems go untouched.
“What is worse, I’m concerned that by dragging the name of human rights into the midst of the so-called culture wars, ‘gay marriage’ events like this one do nothing to help real human rights advocates.
“The conflict between ‘gay marriage’ and the advancement of human rights is enough to make anyone wonder. Indeed: “it is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if ‘gay marriage’ is not perhaps part of a new ideology…insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.”
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COMMENT: Sadly, this last quotation comes from John Paul II, whom John Heard calls “Pope John Paul the Great.” JH has developed and propagates a rather disturbing spirituality of total “surrender” to papal authority, and it is this which essentially motivates the “concern” he expresses. Curiously, JH tones down the papal quote, from the book Memory and Identity (2005), based on the Pope’s conversations with philosopher friends in 1993 and later with some of his aides. Restoring the elided words, we get: ‘It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.” Perhaps JH feared that his legal audience would find the “ideology of evil” a little over the top, a little Bush-like. One may be permitted to feel that, coming from a Pope who in his effort at the “purification of memory” never thought of referring to the Church’s centuries-long role in the torture and execution of those it labelled “Sodomites”, rhetorical flourishes such as these may ring rather hollow.
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Returning to JH’s whataboutery, his blunderbuss technique would consign the vast majority of legal and ethical concerns to the dustbin, in view of more pressing issues. Why should we make such a fuss about our children’s dental hygiene, when there are children dying of hunger in other countries? Such whataboutery can even lead to something worse, the suppression of what are seen as superfluous rights. Why make a fuss about the freedom of the press, or about habeas corpus, when we are engaged in a War on Terror? JH engineers a “conflict” between gay marriage and “the advancement of human rights,” in a dangerous corruption of language, the sort of thing clever lawyers may like but that can be poisonous when taken up by demagogues.
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JH continues:
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“There’s also the bullshit factor. Rather than a debate on the merits of competing ‘climate change’ policies or the plight of the long-suffering first nations and how Australia might apologise to the Stolen Generation, we’ve been gathered instead – and at great cost - to talk about whether or not Elton John can ‘marry’ his boyfriend.”
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COMMENT: The whataboutery here is transparent. The insinuation that if you care about a fancy issue like human rights you must lack concern about more serious matters is a type of argument that has often been used to undercut budding rights movements – as those labelled “Jew-lovers” and “nigger-lovers” in the past know to their cost.
“We can do better.”
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COMMENT: The lofty moral tone struck here is reminiscent of Tony Blair at his most starry-eyed. And we know what obscenities that ushered in. JH plays moral uplift like the banjo and casts his spell on hundreds of idealistic young people, making them feel part of a community, a “we,” that they did not find on the streets of Sydney.
“Today, if we put aside our minor differences and embrace a more humane vision, this becomes a space where peace begins to make sense. Where hope reigns.”
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COMMENT: Who would have guessed that lawyers were prone to such effusions! Agree with me, and we’ll have peace, is what he is really saying. Free debate and calls for legislative innovations are somehow found incompatible with peace and based on false hope.
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“Imagine if [the homoactivist speakers] used their talents to save the lives of same sex attracted men sentenced to hang in Iran?”
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COMMENT: That is not hard to imagine. Those whom JH disparagingly refers to as “homoactivists” have been to the fore in protesting against such atrocities, even at a time when most in the West turned a blind eye to the Taliban stonings of gays. .
“Imagine if Christian conservatives and ‘gay rights’ activists worked together on teen suicide, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS? Imagine, my friends, if all the effort wasted on ‘gay marriage’ were channelled instead into strengthening personal relationships? In ensuring that the ‘gay’ community is no longer a place of ridicule and division, but a true family characterised by compassion, solidarity and hope.”
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COMMENT: The underlying logic of this at first sight meaningless dichotomy is that advocates of gay marriage are seen as encouraging not just stable and deeper personal relationships (as indeed they are, though JH never acknowledges this), but relationships that may include sexual activity of some kind, and of this JH profoundly disapproves. Though himself gay, or as he prefers to say, “same-sex attracted”, JH never speaks of gay sexual expression except in crude accounts of anal intercourse intended to make it ridiculous and repulsive.
“Perhaps then the understandable longing some people feel for acceptance and legal recognition would find a better target than ‘gay marriage’. Real love, not mere tolerance, would be available.”
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COMMENT: Again the dichotomy between “acceptance and legal recognition” and “gay marriage” makes little sense, unless you factor in the idea that gays should be recognized as human beings but physical expression of their sexuality should not. Since the legal recognition is supposed to be a matter of “real love, not mere tolerance”, JH is not talking about decriminalization of homosexual acts, but perhaps some legal arrangements favouring gays who lead chaste lives. For a lawyer, he has been remarkably unsuccessful in making clear what he is referring to.
“After all, human rights belong to people because we’re human beings. Our humanity does not ask for permission, rather it demands recognition and dignity.”
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COMMENT: Again a strange dichotomy. If the law refuses one permission to think, express oneself, and act freely, then one must demand that permission in the very name of recognition of one’s human dignity.
“The question mark over this entire event – organised by a serious and compassionate group like the Law Society of NSW – demonstrates neatly, why ‘gay marriage’ has, unfortunately, and dangerously, become a human rights issue.
“And also why it is not, indeed, a human right.”
COMMENT: This is a mere pirouette, leaving question-marks in abundance hanging in the air over John Heard’s own specious half-argument. There seems to me to be a fundamental lack of seriousness in JH’s preference for flighty soundbites over substantive debate. He regards the debate as already completed in the summary church documents he loves to quote, including Cardinal Grocholewski’s one on gay seminarians (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/12/vatican_instruc.html) and the recent one by the US Bishops which appears to buy into controverted ideas of homosexuality as a psychological disorder (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/neocaths_and_ga.html). His own contribution is to add distracting flimflam that keeps people from reopening the debate in an adult and serene manner. Certainly JH is “on a roll” and his eloquence and enthusiasm sweeps people along, but he would do well to admit that the issue on which he pronounces are, as Luke Timothy Johnson notes, a quaestio disputata, in which ridicule and caricature of his opponents (which he provokes them into returning in full measure) are not the most helpful way to proceed. (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/quaestio_disput.html)
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UPDATE
John Heard spoke to the Melbourne Catholic Lawyers’ Association on March 11, 2008: http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2008/03/dreadtalk-relationship-registers-what.html. Here are some extracts, with my comments:
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“Marriage and the family, so central to and productive of the culture of life, are threatened by attempts to force ‘gay marriage’ laws, extreme forms of civil union and various sorts of radical relationship registries upon an otherwise apathetic, if not overwhelmingly opposed, general population…
“Catholic lawyers, Catholics and people of good will everywhere, can make a powerful difference.
“Indeed, many times, when homoactivists appeared to have scored some victory or other in the ‘gay marriage’ debate in Australia, quick, decisive and humane activity by various notable and other less obvious leaders, writers, politicians and others of goodwill, helped to raise a groundswell of public awareness…
“Instead of meeting homoactivists and others on a phoney playing field where the terms of debate are rigged against us, Christians and others - Catholic lawyers certainly - can speak instead to peace, order, hope and justice; the unbeatable language of love…
“On three occasions, such action has led directly to the defeat of ‘gay marriage’ proposals in Australia. The first two times were when the Commonwealth Attorney General disallowed backdoor ‘gay marriage’ legislation in the ACT and the third time was more recently when the newly elected Labor Prime Minister, who seemed to waver momentarily, later recalled and reiterated – to his great and abiding credit – pre-election promises made to Christians and others across the nation.
“Prime Minister Rudd… found many of the arguments advanced by homoactivists less than convincing in light of the solid, well-researched and compassionate arguments put by those (including those who lead Australia’s largest Trade Union – the SDA) who work for the protection, expansion and edification of the family.
“This is the best possible outcome.
“It is proof of how Christian ideas are incredibly persuasive, especially when buttressed by academically rigorous arguments open to the latest empirical research…”
COMMENT: If this is true, it shows how wrong are those who said that John Paul II’s views on the legalization of morality would have no influence beyond Catholic circles. It seems that Catholic Spain has been more successful in recognizing the rights of gays than Australia has been, thanks to the more adroit tactics of Australian Catholics in resisting social progress. However, John Heard goes on to offer a Catholic model for recognizing civil partnerships, one that, if the Church in Italy and Spain had put it forward would perhaps have greatly lessened the Church-State tensions now rife in those countries.
“To ensure that the Brumby Government’s hasty Partnerships Legislation achieves the best possible outcome for the people of this State, you must sit up… You must resolve to become involved, then, to share your G-d-given talents in a great common pool to build a force, an irresistible force, that draws along the best and brightest elements of our society and catches the interest of everyday voters…
“The first thing that needs to be said in this context is that the Brumby Bill is not ‘gay marriage’. Indeed, as far as these things go, the proposal on the table is relatively modest. It is far from the ideal, but we are not facing the worst-case scenario.
“While Catholic lawyers cannot advocate for any change that would further wound the position of the family or dilute the importance of marriage, we cannot simply throw up our arms and refuse to get involved when things don’t go our way. This is one of the key challenges that come with living in a liberal, plural democracy. When we lose the initial battle of ideas, to misguided government activism in this case, if not voter apathy, we must still offer advice on how any proposal might be, if not totally defeated, then at least improved…
“It is important to point out the least offensive aspects of the current Brumby legislation, before demonstrating how the whole package can be improved.
“It is better, for instance, that this current Bill recognises, rather than creates, a relationship at law; that it excludes – for the moment – ‘gay’ adoption; and, in contrast to the thrice-defeated ACT model, that it does not seek to introduce marriage mimicking ceremonies.
“However, there are a number of problems that should be, at the very least, ironed out if the Bill is to become law. These include:
“1. The fact that the current draft appears to include a sex test for same-sex domestic relationships;
COMMENT: I wonder what a “sex test” means.
“2. The concomitant and unfortunate narrowing of the definition of relationship, so as to exclude stable, worthy interdependent relationships, such as those between a carer and her charge, or two un-wed, perhaps elderly cohabiting sisters; and
COMMENT: Yes, civil partnership legislation gives public recognition to the specific nature of a gay couple’s commitment. To class such relationships in a miscellaneous ragbag of associations is to keep them in a limbo.
“3. The need to signal that this is as far as good people are willing to go. We need to indicate now that this is not the first step in some incremental journey that will inevitably end in full-blown ‘gay marriage’…
“There are problems with giving any de facto relationship the same standing as marriages. Such attempts weaken the family..
“The campaign against ‘gay marriage’ is, then, part of the broader campaign for an increase in marital stability and family cohesion in the Western world. It is, rightly, at the forefront of many good people’s attempts to bring about a new culture of life. It is not, in this context, a movement based on fear, rather an outpouring of love – a chance to right some of the more tragic wrongs brought about by the so-called ‘sexual liberation’.
COMMENT: Champions of sexual liberation, such as Dennis Altman quoted below, are often against gay marriage, seeing it as an effort to curb sexual freedom by forcing gays to comply with the monogamy model as well.
“The good news is that, unlike in that broader struggle, we need not wait for a radical transformation of culture to make a lasting impact for good. Catholics and other good folk can engage with the debate on marriage now.
“If there is to be a relationship register, it simply should not have an explicit or even an implicit sex test. We must insist on that.
COMMENT: The mystery deepens -- what on earth is an “implicit sex test”?
“Rather, why not open the thing up - at the highest levels - to all worthy interdependent relationships (carers, old friends, long-term cohabiting brothers and sisters, etc). This would help deal with concerns about any further dilution of the meaning of marriage, for the Bill currently opens registration up to opposite-sex couples as well. Instead of becoming yet another way for de facto couples to avoid marriage, the legislation would then move to separate and distinct, less hazardous ground.
“Currently, Brumby’s proposal does not even rely on cohabitation, rather it asks for proof that the parties form a ‘couple’ providing ‘financial support of a domestic nature’.
“This is a mistake that must be resisted, not least because it is ridiculous. It cannot be claimed, for instance, that such a lax standard is derived from a desire to recognise and solidify real, stable interdependencies. How real, stable and worthy are these relationships if the putative parties cannot even live together?
“But a sex test must also be rejected because it is not what most same sex attracted men need.
“Because, at a basic level and for whatever reason, sexual encounters between self-identified ‘gay’ males simply do not often correlate with long term, relationship-forming behaviour. Sure, some forms of homosexual partnership – especially lesbian – might approximate the longevity and exclusivity of marriage, but these partnerships are statistically very rare and would likely find relief under the more humane test I’m proposing anyway. There is also no evidence to support a claim that all or even most same sex couples desire ‘gay marriage’ or partnership registration of any kind, quite the contrary.
COMMENT: If the possibility of gay marriage is held out to people, it is amazing how many opt for it. Promiscuity is a second-best that they desert in droves. There might be a danger of people being pressed into marriage, as of course happens in the heterosexual world too, but it could be argued that from a lofty moral point of view such pressure is a salutary challenge to selfish bachelors.
“The truth is that most same sex attracted men, while often sexually active, are not in fact in any kind of companionate relationship at all and the vast majority of those who are do not indicate any plan to formalise these relationships. A sex test is, then, not even tailored to the express interests of the target demographic. It is more likely the product of a peculiar form of extremist ideology. Such notions, and the anti-human, anti-family outcomes they encourage, should have no place in Victorian or Australian law…
COMMENT: This claim is not based on solid research. It is hard to reconcile with the huge numbers who have sought marriage or civil partnership in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and France.
“In an age when HIV infection rates are on the increase, most alarmingly among inner city, ‘gay’ identified male populations in Victoria and Queensland – and drug use remains a serious, shocking problem, there are certainly more pressing, ethical and practical issues that face ordinary same sex attracted men and women than whether or not John Brumby ‘registers’ their sexual encounters and properly private financial arrangements.”
COMMENT: This whataboutery is a red herring.
“Indeed, many same sex attracted men and women find the very notion of ‘gay marriage’ and relationship registration irrelevant, if not deeply offensive. LaTrobe’s Professor Dennis Altman, one of the founders of the ‘Gay Liberation Movement’, sharply criticised a few homoactivists’ fixation on ‘gay marriage’ and described the whole push as ‘self indulgent crap’…
COMMENT: Many a heterosexual bachelor would say the same thing about the fuss about heterosexual marriage.
“As it stands, Brumby’s proposal certainly seems to militate, in a most hurtful way, against the flourishing of same sex attracted men and women. It serves the interests of a slim minority of the tiny same sex attracted minority; and even then seems to serve only a dwindling homoactivist fringe. It is a highly divisive change, one that is completely unacceptable to most Christians and other ordinary voters. Depending on how the definition of ‘couple’ is to be decided, it might also mark a new, regrettable entry in Victorian law, the first time that sodomy or other non-procreative sex has been celebrated in our courts and Parliament.
COMMENT: Non-procreative sex is celebrated by every Church or State that recognize the marriages of aged or infertile couples. Talking about gays as a tiny minority is rather insulting.
“Thus, the deletion of a sex test would remove these most serious objections to a relationship register in Victoria. The resulting legislation might then be something that the wider community, serious same-sex attracted men and women, and even some Catholic lawyers could, in good conscience, support.
“Writing about a similar impasse in San Francisco in the 1990s, an American Vatican news specialist explained that, rather than forfeit government funding to the Bay Area’s Catholic Charities: ‘the city’s then-archbishop pushed to have the benefits extended to “any legally domiciled member” of a household. The city signed off on the idea, and a crisis was averted.’ …
“This politically moderate, socially compassionate and apparently orthodox model has since been urged by Catholic bishops and groups in Seattle, New Jersey, San Juan and even Adelaide, where Archbishop Philip Wilson lent his support to the 2006 South Australian, so-called Partnerships Legislation that recognised a whole range of worthy, interdependent relationships.”
COMMENT: It is perhaps in this sense that Archbishops Martin (Dublin) and Zollitsch (Freiburg) can be seen as supporters of civil partnerships.
“It is a model that goes some way to meeting the legitimate needs of real same sex attracted men and women without reducing their relationships to sex acts and properly private financial arrangements. It also does not fail to celebrate and protect worthy relationships wherever they may be found, widening the franchise and promising to transform homoactivists’ sometimes selfish rhetoric into real-life, justice-bearing, inclusive reform. It is, therefore, the most practical, humane and acceptable model on offer.
“It is the only model Catholic lawyers and other people of good will should support.”
COMMENT: I never noticed that such legislation reduces peoples’ relationship to sex acts. Indeed, it is less concerned with sex than ordinary marriage legislation is, because of the absence of a procreative dimension. To say the financial aspect should remain properly private sounds dangerous. (Perhaps one of the reasons gay marriage is not so popular is that it brings in some of the heavy financial implications of heterosexual marriage.)
UPDATE: Here is a useful corrective of the views of Courage, an organization greatly admired by John Heard: http://catholicactionnetwork.org/dec05/documents/CourageFactSheet_001.pdf
I note that Heard has been writing letters to bishops all over the world --with scant regard for their busy schedules -- in a bid to have me silenced (so much for Australian commitment to freedom of opinion and freedom of speech). Apparently he has started up an entire correspondence with Cardinal George Pell. One statement that borders on libel is his allegation that I talk about his sexual life in a way unbecoming to a priest. But as he explains on one of his own links, all this means is that I queried the consistency between the louche rooftop photos of “gay dad couchant” and the radical diatribes against “gay” culture. “The sexual innuendo I mentioned relates to his ad hominem attacks (please do not think I assail anyone on personal grounds without provocation) regarding pictures I’ve posted here of my friend Gay Dad. Fr Joe frequently returns to these when his wider arguments fail. He describes them - again, here and on other sites that he thinks I don’t read - as examples of my apparent interest in BDSM. This is outrageous.” It is true that I gave the link to these photos, which are in the public domain, to Dreadnought’s fans at the Pertinacious Papist website, where they were instantly identified as pornography -- something I would not say myself.
In his comments on the US papal visit Dreadnought talks of people who “complain of being ‘burnt out’ by, and /or ‘chewed up and spat out’ of ‘the gay scene’.” This surely counts as an argument for, not against, stable unions? He writes: “While a few homoactivists think that ‘gay marriage’ is a human right, and a most pressing issue, most good people disagree. Instead, the Pope spoke in very powerful terms about the transcendent nature of the human person”. How does the dignity of the human person contradict the dignity of a loving relationship between two persons? He tells us of “a gay man who has been disenchanted with his church” but who was touched by the Pope: “When he looked at me, it felt like I was part of the church, like we are all part of the church, and that we all are important, no matter who we are.” This is taken to prove “how wrong homoactivists and others are when they claim that the Pope and bishops, those who exercise teaching / pastoral authority in the Catholic Church, are necessarily aloof from the lives of same sex attracted men and women.” But the issue is not an alleged aloofness. No one would say that the great moral theologian Paul VI was aloof from married men and women. The issue is simpler: a doctrine that is unworkable and damaging in practice. Very patronizingly, Dreadnought asks us to “note also, the maturation in the Pope’s statements about marriage and the family. Moving from a focus on once-pressing particular threats to the institution, ‘gay marriage’ for instance, the Pope and the Vatican are broadening out the defence of marriage to include much more worrying phenomena, like the increase in non-marital, sexual cohabitation generally.” It is rather presumptuous to praise the Vatican for the maturation of its views -- the Vatican has been thinking about marriage for a thousand years. A further maturation of Vatican discourse on homosexuality is something that might well be desiderated however.
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MAIN TEXT
At a meeting of the NSW Law Society, Young Lawyers, in Martin Place, Sydney, on February 8, 2008, John Heard, aka Dreadnought, addressed the question: “Is Gay Marriage a Human Rights Issue?” as follows, http://johnheard.blogspot.com :
“It seems ‘gay marriage’ has become a human rights issue, but not because it is a human right. Rather, all this talk might actually harm the progress of human freedom.
“Why? The topic for discussion IS SAME SEX MARRIAGE A HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE? Provides us with a quick answer.
“That question mark, right at the end, certainly alerts us to the fact that people are uneasy. No one, not even its loudest advocates and careful, sympathetic bodies like the Young Lawyers, seems to be convinced that ‘gay marriage’ really is a human right.
“That doesn’t go down well.
“Did good people ask Barack Obama, the black US presidential candidate, whether racial equality was a human rights issue? No! Anyone in his or her right mind, listening to the inner voice of conscience and compassion, knows that it is.
“Human rights are irresistible.
“Would the venerable Law Society of NSW have asked the millions who suffered in the past under tyranny and those who continue to cry out today for freedom of association, of religion, for the right to free speech, would anyone dare to ask these people if their precious freedoms are real?
“Absolutely not.
“Human rights are unmistakeable.
“If a vast majority of serious and compassionate people still doubt whether or not ‘gay marriage’ is a human right, then the answer is no. If all the major social institutions, both major political parties and every mainstream religion condemns ‘gay marriage’ then the answer is no. We wouldn’t be up here – G-d forbid – arguing about whether or not anti-Semitism were okay.
“It is not.
“So the fact that we are gathered here today under this banner indicates, right from the start, that no one really believes that ‘gay marriage’ is like racial equality, it is not a human right like freedom of association or free speech. Good people are right to doubt; it is not any kind of human right at all.”
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COMMENT: This argument of John Heard’s is a sophism. Moreover its premise is refuted by the facts of history. Very often things that most people today would regard as unquestionable, evident, irresistible human rights were not so regarded in the distant or even the recent past. The UN’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights, a postwar document, identifies such rights as freedom of expression, freedom of opinion, freedom from coercion in religion, freedom to propagate one’s religious beliefs. The Catholic Church did not recognize these rights historically, and in fact actively infringed them. Far from being self-evident and above question, these rights were not recognized by the foremost body of moral reflection in the Christian West. Even the right to personal freedom was not recognized, for as late as 1866 the Holy Office taught that slavery is not at all incompatible with natural and divine law (the declaration bears the papal signature). The right of people not to be imprisoned for adult consensual sex is still not recognized by the Catholic Church (Letter on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual People, 1986) and was certainly more than questioned when it came up in legal struggles in Ireland and other countries.
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Since the Catholic Church recognizes the natural right to marriage, it should actually be an easy step to recognize that gays and lesbians have a right to partnerships that allow the human flourishing and constructive living that marriage allows heterosexuals, whether or not these partnerships are called marriage. This right is indeed being established and vindicated at the highest levels of European law and governance at this very time, and a great many Catholics approve of this. For the Vatican there is “no conceivable right” to legal protection of immoral actions, and moreover any equiparation of samesex relationships with marriage is seen as a threat to marriage itself; it is on this basis that a fierce, and largely successful, crusade is being conducted against civil partnership legislation in Italy, while the Spanish bishops are emerging as the foremost political opponents of the Zapatero government; if it falls, they may push for repeal of the gay marriage legislation in Spain. The hierarchical Church in these countries has shown itself willing to cast its lot with anitdemocratic forces or with the likes of Silvio Berlusconi (against the admirable Romano Prodi, perceived as a dangerous liberal).
Who would dare ask those released from oppression ‘if their precious freedoms are real’?, asks Heard. Now of course gays and lesbians who have taken advantage of civil partnership legislation would certainly have no doubt of the reality of the freedom now secured. That “Young Lawyers” in Sydney, probably sympathetic to the idea that gay marriage is a human right, put the idea forward in a dubitative form can hardly be read as a confession that they know it is not a human right. If I had never thought about it and someone asked me, “is there a natural right to marry?” I would hesitate before replying. Rights issues are never the knock-down unquestionable matters that Heard thinks they always are. The Rights of Man secured in the French and American Revolutions were innovative and consested. The Human Rights asserted by the UN were not recognized in the various fascist and communist regimes of the previous decades. To think that everybody knew in their hearts what these rights were is very naïve.
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John Heard continues:
“However, ‘gay marriage’ seems to have become – sadly – a human rights issue.
“Certainly, it distracts us as a community from more urgent problems.
“Because, as we come here today to debate a half-forgotten topic that the vast majority of Australians reject, in a city where Mardi Gras shrinks and HIV/AIDS infections too often rise in a world that faces many serious, pressing challenges, these other problems go untouched.
“What is worse, I’m concerned that by dragging the name of human rights into the midst of the so-called culture wars, ‘gay marriage’ events like this one do nothing to help real human rights advocates.
“The conflict between ‘gay marriage’ and the advancement of human rights is enough to make anyone wonder. Indeed: “it is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if ‘gay marriage’ is not perhaps part of a new ideology…insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.”
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COMMENT: Sadly, this last quotation comes from John Paul II, whom John Heard calls “Pope John Paul the Great.” JH has developed and propagates a rather disturbing spirituality of total “surrender” to papal authority, and it is this which essentially motivates the “concern” he expresses. Curiously, JH tones down the papal quote, from the book Memory and Identity (2005), based on the Pope’s conversations with philosopher friends in 1993 and later with some of his aides. Restoring the elided words, we get: ‘It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.” Perhaps JH feared that his legal audience would find the “ideology of evil” a little over the top, a little Bush-like. One may be permitted to feel that, coming from a Pope who in his effort at the “purification of memory” never thought of referring to the Church’s centuries-long role in the torture and execution of those it labelled “Sodomites”, rhetorical flourishes such as these may ring rather hollow.
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Returning to JH’s whataboutery, his blunderbuss technique would consign the vast majority of legal and ethical concerns to the dustbin, in view of more pressing issues. Why should we make such a fuss about our children’s dental hygiene, when there are children dying of hunger in other countries? Such whataboutery can even lead to something worse, the suppression of what are seen as superfluous rights. Why make a fuss about the freedom of the press, or about habeas corpus, when we are engaged in a War on Terror? JH engineers a “conflict” between gay marriage and “the advancement of human rights,” in a dangerous corruption of language, the sort of thing clever lawyers may like but that can be poisonous when taken up by demagogues.
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JH continues:
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“There’s also the bullshit factor. Rather than a debate on the merits of competing ‘climate change’ policies or the plight of the long-suffering first nations and how Australia might apologise to the Stolen Generation, we’ve been gathered instead – and at great cost - to talk about whether or not Elton John can ‘marry’ his boyfriend.”
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COMMENT: The whataboutery here is transparent. The insinuation that if you care about a fancy issue like human rights you must lack concern about more serious matters is a type of argument that has often been used to undercut budding rights movements – as those labelled “Jew-lovers” and “nigger-lovers” in the past know to their cost.
“We can do better.”
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COMMENT: The lofty moral tone struck here is reminiscent of Tony Blair at his most starry-eyed. And we know what obscenities that ushered in. JH plays moral uplift like the banjo and casts his spell on hundreds of idealistic young people, making them feel part of a community, a “we,” that they did not find on the streets of Sydney.
“Today, if we put aside our minor differences and embrace a more humane vision, this becomes a space where peace begins to make sense. Where hope reigns.”
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COMMENT: Who would have guessed that lawyers were prone to such effusions! Agree with me, and we’ll have peace, is what he is really saying. Free debate and calls for legislative innovations are somehow found incompatible with peace and based on false hope.
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“Imagine if [the homoactivist speakers] used their talents to save the lives of same sex attracted men sentenced to hang in Iran?”
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COMMENT: That is not hard to imagine. Those whom JH disparagingly refers to as “homoactivists” have been to the fore in protesting against such atrocities, even at a time when most in the West turned a blind eye to the Taliban stonings of gays. .
“Imagine if Christian conservatives and ‘gay rights’ activists worked together on teen suicide, drug addiction and HIV/AIDS? Imagine, my friends, if all the effort wasted on ‘gay marriage’ were channelled instead into strengthening personal relationships? In ensuring that the ‘gay’ community is no longer a place of ridicule and division, but a true family characterised by compassion, solidarity and hope.”
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COMMENT: The underlying logic of this at first sight meaningless dichotomy is that advocates of gay marriage are seen as encouraging not just stable and deeper personal relationships (as indeed they are, though JH never acknowledges this), but relationships that may include sexual activity of some kind, and of this JH profoundly disapproves. Though himself gay, or as he prefers to say, “same-sex attracted”, JH never speaks of gay sexual expression except in crude accounts of anal intercourse intended to make it ridiculous and repulsive.
“Perhaps then the understandable longing some people feel for acceptance and legal recognition would find a better target than ‘gay marriage’. Real love, not mere tolerance, would be available.”
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COMMENT: Again the dichotomy between “acceptance and legal recognition” and “gay marriage” makes little sense, unless you factor in the idea that gays should be recognized as human beings but physical expression of their sexuality should not. Since the legal recognition is supposed to be a matter of “real love, not mere tolerance”, JH is not talking about decriminalization of homosexual acts, but perhaps some legal arrangements favouring gays who lead chaste lives. For a lawyer, he has been remarkably unsuccessful in making clear what he is referring to.
“After all, human rights belong to people because we’re human beings. Our humanity does not ask for permission, rather it demands recognition and dignity.”
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COMMENT: Again a strange dichotomy. If the law refuses one permission to think, express oneself, and act freely, then one must demand that permission in the very name of recognition of one’s human dignity.
“The question mark over this entire event – organised by a serious and compassionate group like the Law Society of NSW – demonstrates neatly, why ‘gay marriage’ has, unfortunately, and dangerously, become a human rights issue.
“And also why it is not, indeed, a human right.”
COMMENT: This is a mere pirouette, leaving question-marks in abundance hanging in the air over John Heard’s own specious half-argument. There seems to me to be a fundamental lack of seriousness in JH’s preference for flighty soundbites over substantive debate. He regards the debate as already completed in the summary church documents he loves to quote, including Cardinal Grocholewski’s one on gay seminarians (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/12/vatican_instruc.html) and the recent one by the US Bishops which appears to buy into controverted ideas of homosexuality as a psychological disorder (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/11/neocaths_and_ga.html). His own contribution is to add distracting flimflam that keeps people from reopening the debate in an adult and serene manner. Certainly JH is “on a roll” and his eloquence and enthusiasm sweeps people along, but he would do well to admit that the issue on which he pronounces are, as Luke Timothy Johnson notes, a quaestio disputata, in which ridicule and caricature of his opponents (which he provokes them into returning in full measure) are not the most helpful way to proceed. (http://josephsoleary.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/quaestio_disput.html)
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UPDATE
John Heard spoke to the Melbourne Catholic Lawyers’ Association on March 11, 2008: http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2008/03/dreadtalk-relationship-registers-what.html. Here are some extracts, with my comments:
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“Marriage and the family, so central to and productive of the culture of life, are threatened by attempts to force ‘gay marriage’ laws, extreme forms of civil union and various sorts of radical relationship registries upon an otherwise apathetic, if not overwhelmingly opposed, general population…
“Catholic lawyers, Catholics and people of good will everywhere, can make a powerful difference.
“Indeed, many times, when homoactivists appeared to have scored some victory or other in the ‘gay marriage’ debate in Australia, quick, decisive and humane activity by various notable and other less obvious leaders, writers, politicians and others of goodwill, helped to raise a groundswell of public awareness…
“Instead of meeting homoactivists and others on a phoney playing field where the terms of debate are rigged against us, Christians and others - Catholic lawyers certainly - can speak instead to peace, order, hope and justice; the unbeatable language of love…
“On three occasions, such action has led directly to the defeat of ‘gay marriage’ proposals in Australia. The first two times were when the Commonwealth Attorney General disallowed backdoor ‘gay marriage’ legislation in the ACT and the third time was more recently when the newly elected Labor Prime Minister, who seemed to waver momentarily, later recalled and reiterated – to his great and abiding credit – pre-election promises made to Christians and others across the nation.
“Prime Minister Rudd… found many of the arguments advanced by homoactivists less than convincing in light of the solid, well-researched and compassionate arguments put by those (including those who lead Australia’s largest Trade Union – the SDA) who work for the protection, expansion and edification of the family.
“This is the best possible outcome.
“It is proof of how Christian ideas are incredibly persuasive, especially when buttressed by academically rigorous arguments open to the latest empirical research…”
COMMENT: If this is true, it shows how wrong are those who said that John Paul II’s views on the legalization of morality would have no influence beyond Catholic circles. It seems that Catholic Spain has been more successful in recognizing the rights of gays than Australia has been, thanks to the more adroit tactics of Australian Catholics in resisting social progress. However, John Heard goes on to offer a Catholic model for recognizing civil partnerships, one that, if the Church in Italy and Spain had put it forward would perhaps have greatly lessened the Church-State tensions now rife in those countries.
“To ensure that the Brumby Government’s hasty Partnerships Legislation achieves the best possible outcome for the people of this State, you must sit up… You must resolve to become involved, then, to share your G-d-given talents in a great common pool to build a force, an irresistible force, that draws along the best and brightest elements of our society and catches the interest of everyday voters…
“The first thing that needs to be said in this context is that the Brumby Bill is not ‘gay marriage’. Indeed, as far as these things go, the proposal on the table is relatively modest. It is far from the ideal, but we are not facing the worst-case scenario.
“While Catholic lawyers cannot advocate for any change that would further wound the position of the family or dilute the importance of marriage, we cannot simply throw up our arms and refuse to get involved when things don’t go our way. This is one of the key challenges that come with living in a liberal, plural democracy. When we lose the initial battle of ideas, to misguided government activism in this case, if not voter apathy, we must still offer advice on how any proposal might be, if not totally defeated, then at least improved…
“It is important to point out the least offensive aspects of the current Brumby legislation, before demonstrating how the whole package can be improved.
“It is better, for instance, that this current Bill recognises, rather than creates, a relationship at law; that it excludes – for the moment – ‘gay’ adoption; and, in contrast to the thrice-defeated ACT model, that it does not seek to introduce marriage mimicking ceremonies.
“However, there are a number of problems that should be, at the very least, ironed out if the Bill is to become law. These include:
“1. The fact that the current draft appears to include a sex test for same-sex domestic relationships;
COMMENT: I wonder what a “sex test” means.
“2. The concomitant and unfortunate narrowing of the definition of relationship, so as to exclude stable, worthy interdependent relationships, such as those between a carer and her charge, or two un-wed, perhaps elderly cohabiting sisters; and
COMMENT: Yes, civil partnership legislation gives public recognition to the specific nature of a gay couple’s commitment. To class such relationships in a miscellaneous ragbag of associations is to keep them in a limbo.
“3. The need to signal that this is as far as good people are willing to go. We need to indicate now that this is not the first step in some incremental journey that will inevitably end in full-blown ‘gay marriage’…
“There are problems with giving any de facto relationship the same standing as marriages. Such attempts weaken the family..
“The campaign against ‘gay marriage’ is, then, part of the broader campaign for an increase in marital stability and family cohesion in the Western world. It is, rightly, at the forefront of many good people’s attempts to bring about a new culture of life. It is not, in this context, a movement based on fear, rather an outpouring of love – a chance to right some of the more tragic wrongs brought about by the so-called ‘sexual liberation’.
COMMENT: Champions of sexual liberation, such as Dennis Altman quoted below, are often against gay marriage, seeing it as an effort to curb sexual freedom by forcing gays to comply with the monogamy model as well.
“The good news is that, unlike in that broader struggle, we need not wait for a radical transformation of culture to make a lasting impact for good. Catholics and other good folk can engage with the debate on marriage now.
“If there is to be a relationship register, it simply should not have an explicit or even an implicit sex test. We must insist on that.
COMMENT: The mystery deepens -- what on earth is an “implicit sex test”?
“Rather, why not open the thing up - at the highest levels - to all worthy interdependent relationships (carers, old friends, long-term cohabiting brothers and sisters, etc). This would help deal with concerns about any further dilution of the meaning of marriage, for the Bill currently opens registration up to opposite-sex couples as well. Instead of becoming yet another way for de facto couples to avoid marriage, the legislation would then move to separate and distinct, less hazardous ground.
“Currently, Brumby’s proposal does not even rely on cohabitation, rather it asks for proof that the parties form a ‘couple’ providing ‘financial support of a domestic nature’.
“This is a mistake that must be resisted, not least because it is ridiculous. It cannot be claimed, for instance, that such a lax standard is derived from a desire to recognise and solidify real, stable interdependencies. How real, stable and worthy are these relationships if the putative parties cannot even live together?
“But a sex test must also be rejected because it is not what most same sex attracted men need.
“Because, at a basic level and for whatever reason, sexual encounters between self-identified ‘gay’ males simply do not often correlate with long term, relationship-forming behaviour. Sure, some forms of homosexual partnership – especially lesbian – might approximate the longevity and exclusivity of marriage, but these partnerships are statistically very rare and would likely find relief under the more humane test I’m proposing anyway. There is also no evidence to support a claim that all or even most same sex couples desire ‘gay marriage’ or partnership registration of any kind, quite the contrary.
COMMENT: If the possibility of gay marriage is held out to people, it is amazing how many opt for it. Promiscuity is a second-best that they desert in droves. There might be a danger of people being pressed into marriage, as of course happens in the heterosexual world too, but it could be argued that from a lofty moral point of view such pressure is a salutary challenge to selfish bachelors.
“The truth is that most same sex attracted men, while often sexually active, are not in fact in any kind of companionate relationship at all and the vast majority of those who are do not indicate any plan to formalise these relationships. A sex test is, then, not even tailored to the express interests of the target demographic. It is more likely the product of a peculiar form of extremist ideology. Such notions, and the anti-human, anti-family outcomes they encourage, should have no place in Victorian or Australian law…
COMMENT: This claim is not based on solid research. It is hard to reconcile with the huge numbers who have sought marriage or civil partnership in Britain, the Netherlands, Spain and France.
“In an age when HIV infection rates are on the increase, most alarmingly among inner city, ‘gay’ identified male populations in Victoria and Queensland – and drug use remains a serious, shocking problem, there are certainly more pressing, ethical and practical issues that face ordinary same sex attracted men and women than whether or not John Brumby ‘registers’ their sexual encounters and properly private financial arrangements.”
COMMENT: This whataboutery is a red herring.
“Indeed, many same sex attracted men and women find the very notion of ‘gay marriage’ and relationship registration irrelevant, if not deeply offensive. LaTrobe’s Professor Dennis Altman, one of the founders of the ‘Gay Liberation Movement’, sharply criticised a few homoactivists’ fixation on ‘gay marriage’ and described the whole push as ‘self indulgent crap’…
COMMENT: Many a heterosexual bachelor would say the same thing about the fuss about heterosexual marriage.
“As it stands, Brumby’s proposal certainly seems to militate, in a most hurtful way, against the flourishing of same sex attracted men and women. It serves the interests of a slim minority of the tiny same sex attracted minority; and even then seems to serve only a dwindling homoactivist fringe. It is a highly divisive change, one that is completely unacceptable to most Christians and other ordinary voters. Depending on how the definition of ‘couple’ is to be decided, it might also mark a new, regrettable entry in Victorian law, the first time that sodomy or other non-procreative sex has been celebrated in our courts and Parliament.
COMMENT: Non-procreative sex is celebrated by every Church or State that recognize the marriages of aged or infertile couples. Talking about gays as a tiny minority is rather insulting.
“Thus, the deletion of a sex test would remove these most serious objections to a relationship register in Victoria. The resulting legislation might then be something that the wider community, serious same-sex attracted men and women, and even some Catholic lawyers could, in good conscience, support.
“Writing about a similar impasse in San Francisco in the 1990s, an American Vatican news specialist explained that, rather than forfeit government funding to the Bay Area’s Catholic Charities: ‘the city’s then-archbishop pushed to have the benefits extended to “any legally domiciled member” of a household. The city signed off on the idea, and a crisis was averted.’ …
“This politically moderate, socially compassionate and apparently orthodox model has since been urged by Catholic bishops and groups in Seattle, New Jersey, San Juan and even Adelaide, where Archbishop Philip Wilson lent his support to the 2006 South Australian, so-called Partnerships Legislation that recognised a whole range of worthy, interdependent relationships.”
COMMENT: It is perhaps in this sense that Archbishops Martin (Dublin) and Zollitsch (Freiburg) can be seen as supporters of civil partnerships.
“It is a model that goes some way to meeting the legitimate needs of real same sex attracted men and women without reducing their relationships to sex acts and properly private financial arrangements. It also does not fail to celebrate and protect worthy relationships wherever they may be found, widening the franchise and promising to transform homoactivists’ sometimes selfish rhetoric into real-life, justice-bearing, inclusive reform. It is, therefore, the most practical, humane and acceptable model on offer.
“It is the only model Catholic lawyers and other people of good will should support.”
COMMENT: I never noticed that such legislation reduces peoples’ relationship to sex acts. Indeed, it is less concerned with sex than ordinary marriage legislation is, because of the absence of a procreative dimension. To say the financial aspect should remain properly private sounds dangerous. (Perhaps one of the reasons gay marriage is not so popular is that it brings in some of the heavy financial implications of heterosexual marriage.)
Excellent summary and critique of Heard's contribution to the recent debate on gay marriage in Sydney.
Thanks for posting it.
Peace,
Michael
Posted by: Michael J. Bayly | February 15, 2008 at 12:44 AM
In re: the alleged sophism.
The argument is not, in fact, that no one does, or ever did hold racist, etc. views.
Rather, the argument more accurately runs like this:
1. Good people, 'listen...to the inner voice of conscience and compassion'.
2. Having listened to the 'inner voice of conscience and compassion', the 'venerable Law Society of NSW' and 'a vast majority of serious and compassionate people' plus 'all the major social institutions, both major political parties and every mainstream religion' have come to a particular view.
That is, good people are agreed.
Note: The argument is neither that all people are agreed nor that all people will always be agreed. Just that, on this issue, good people are near unananimous.
If anything, you could take issue with the importation of value, that 'good' that sneaks into the major premise, but the sheer weight of opinion against 'gay marriage' is incontrovertible. It is an empirical fact.
I find it very impressive, so should you, keen as you appear to be on the so-called sensum fidei.
Your readers (especially Michael) should note that these were, in fact, prepared introductory remarks, limited to not more than five minutes in duration, delivered before a panel discussion in a public space in the middle of Sydney.
It wasn't an academic conference.
It would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
If you are genuinely interested in the authoritative teaching of the Church you vowed to serve, if Michael Bayly is willing to put aside his ambiguous witness, I invite you all to study, pray and consider with me and my readers the Church's position as articulated on DREADNOUGHT and elsewhere.
Where I fall short of orthodoxy or charity, please correct me.
Christians, after all, do not Fisk. We love. In Lent, we can all benefit from paying closer
attention to the Word.
It is some comfort to me, however, that you single out Avery Cardinal Dulles, John Paul the Great, Pope Benedict XVI, etc. to criticise, alongside me, and for very similar reasons (i.e., a committment to orthodoxy).
I do not ask to be 'corrected' if that means being inculcated in heresy, apostasy, etc.
In re: 'gay marriage' and flourishing.
It is precisely because homogenital acts are sinful, and sodomy is radically unlike procreative sex, that the Church opposes moves that would, by ignoring or denying these natural facts, block the access to flourishing, bar the way to 'constructive living'.
It has helped me, on this point, to consider what marriage means. The Church's position on marriage is very far from, and much more beautiful I'd hazard, than the dry, positivistic ideas espoused by Zapatero and the homoactivists.
[Unfortunately, I don't have the time to respond to comments here. Please engage directly via the website of the Facebook group].
- JH
Posted by: DREADNOUGHT | February 15, 2008 at 02:01 AM
Dread, "the argument is not..."
I think you do not need to clarify this. The entire argument is quoted above.
And as I said, it is false. "Good people are agreed"? It was precisely the great and the good who upheld the blindnesses to human rights in the past. Today many of the great and the good have discovered gay rights and are asking if gay marriage is a right. Asking not in the sense of doubting that right and wanting to put the clock back, but in the sense of possibly discovering a right that was not thought of up to a few years ago.
Is it Unchristian of me to fisk you? "Thou shalt not fisk"? But Christians are the inventors of fisking. We owe to Origen's fisking of Celsus the preservation of the latter's Alethes Logos in its entirety. Gregory of Nyssa fisks Eunomius. Luther fisks Erasmus. As a lawyer and controversialist you would enjoy reading them.
On querying the Vatican's view on homosexuality, I would merely point out that it is much the same as querying the Vatican's view on artificial contraception. Having effectively lost the latter battle in the court of Catholic opinion, the Vatican seem to be losing the former as well. Even elderly Catholics, especially parents of gays and lesbians, are speaking up in favour of gay marriage. The Vatican sees the ban on artificial contraception as ensuring human flourishing and constructive living out of matrimony, and the same argument is extended -- even less persuasively -- in its campaign against recognition of civil partnerships. Zapatero may have a positivistic view of marriage, but he has provided something for gay couples that is treasured by them and even felt to be sacred. If the Church were to draw on its heritage of sacramental marriage to provide something more, I think that this would be a good thing.
Now I am asked to join a Facebook group? Hmm, having been bruisingly "banned" from your old combox which you shut down, I can only see this invitation as a ploy to ensure that you can control the debate, so I must regretfully decline. But thanks all the same.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 15, 2008 at 08:44 AM
"I would merely point out that it is much the same as querying the Vatican's view on artificial contraception. Having effectively lost the latter battle in the court of Catholic opinion, the Vatican seem to be losing the former as well."
I would very much agree with that - in my parish I witness many samesex couples - male/male and female/female with children. In my view JH should refocus his talents and energies on finding a good partner - a great partner that would let him consider commiting to a permanent relationship and perhaps even adoption of children.
In my view that is the proper Christian thing to do in 2008.
All this nonconvincing homosexual sturm und drang about resisting temptations and so on - give me a break - whom is JH fooling?
Posted by: grega | February 20, 2008 at 06:38 AM
But doesn't this beg the question - "What IS marriage?" And what is a Catholic marriage?
One could argue that marriage is a mutable social and legal construct. The fact that the Catholic Church sees, in its formal definition of marriage, something immutable, pre-legal (as in temporally prior to 'government' and 'law'), and sacramental, and illustrative of the nuptial images in the Jewish & Christian Scriptures shows, if nothing else, that the Church has a formal and realizable definition of marriage.
Human persons, communities, societies and cultures have greatly benefited from a close correspondence of the social and legal definition of marriage to the Church's definition of marriage.
Does social change demand a corresponding legal change in the definition of marriage? Does a changing secular definition of marriage require a corresponding change in religious definitions of marriage? Perhaps the Church's definition of marriage should be retained as a 'control' for those who desire it, while a period of experimentation continues where dating, courtship, marriage, sex, the begetting of children, family life and the relation of all these to one's religion continue to be decoupled. Then, after a season, we can see where the Holy Spirit is really at work. Or, in a more practical sense, who is happier.
Isn't it true that, for many advocates of alternative definitions and forms of message, Church teaching is irrelevant? If so then why should the Church change its teaching to suit those who ignore it at least and excoriate it at worst?
Posted by: Mark Andrews | February 23, 2008 at 03:15 PM
@grega: I thought your comment on "the proper Christian thing to do in 2008" was interesting. I don't think that morals change; what would the proper "Christian thing" have been last year?
As for the battles on the court of Catholic opinion, the tide is turning. My seminarian friends get a special look in their eyes every time someone mentions the spirit of the Second Vatican Council. And I don't think they've seen this blog.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 24, 2008 at 12:49 PM
Thanks for the comment, Mark Andrews. I think Dreadnought is against pretty much any gay civil partnership legislation because he thinks it is equivalent in practice to marriage. I think such partnerships can be seen as participating analogically in the good of marriage, or as an approximation to marriage, but not equivalent to marriage.
"One could argue that marriage is a mutable social and legal construct. The fact that the Catholic Church sees, in its formal definition of marriage, something immutable, pre-legal (as in temporally prior to 'government' and 'law'), and sacramental, and illustrative of the nuptial images in the Jewish & Christian Scriptures shows, if nothing else, that the Church has a formal and realizable definition of marriage."
Fair enough. I think the Church has an idea of natural marriage as part of natural law -- polygamy is included in this as part of what Aquinas calls secondary natural law. The idea of sacramental marriage however is for baptized Christians only; natural marriages can be dissolved -- even if one of the partners is baptized -- in favor of a sacramental marriage (the Pauline and Petrine privileges).
So the claim for "gay marriage" would be twofold: recognition of gay unions as natural marriage, and sacramental celebration of such unions. The Church at the moment does not recognize either claim. But the issue that is livelier just now is the right of gays to civil marriage, which the Church resists in part because it would seem to entail that marriage is just a social arrangement without roots in natural law. Churchmen occasionally express tolerance of civil partnership legislation as long as it does not equiparate such partnership with marriage (such seems to be the attitude of Archbishop Martin, Dublin, and Archbishop Zollitsch, Freiburg).
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 24, 2008 at 01:02 PM
Catherine Nolan, morals do change, or at least our understanding of morals does change. Perhaps you mean that morals as defined by the Catholic Church do not change? But even this is not true; see Charles Curran, ed. Changes in Official Catholic Moral Teaching, and John Noonan's books for the irrefutable evidence of many changes in official Catholic morality over the centuries.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 24, 2008 at 01:06 PM
In the older days priests formed a vast fraternity, joined each year by an ardent new crop of young, fresh minds. Now many priests must feel they are at the end of the line, in a greying community with little in the way of youthful renewal. "My seminarian friends get a special look in their eyes every time someone mentions the spirit of the Second Vatican Council." How many seminarians are there, relatively speaking? Only a very small number in most countries, and from reports like this they seem to be hothouse products unlikely to last long. That seminarians should be hostile to the phrase "spirit of Vatican II" is peculiar and rather worrisome, since it was a phrase used again and again by Paul VI and also by John Paul II. Perhaps they imagine that the phrase has become just a cover for abuses or dilution of the faith. In my own seminarian days I was a bumptious defender of orthodoxy against heretics real or imagined -- I think most seminarians grow out of that in time.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 24, 2008 at 01:12 PM
Catherine,
for me to adopt children if you are in a committed stable and loving relationship is very much the moral thing to do. And yes morals do change - I could for example imagine that at some not so distant point in time (if the current upwards trend in population grows continues) the moral thing to do will be all of a sudden quite the opposite of what we practice today.
Posted by: grega | February 24, 2008 at 01:26 PM
Fr. Joe, I would like to publicly apologize to some hurtful posts I left for you on this blog and others.
I would like to affirm my respect for you, your priesthood and your exercise of your ministry.
In particular I would like to say that, if those who grant you priestly faculties are both confident in you and are content to sustain your ministry, then I am happy to defer to those who know you best, and are best able to make these kinds of decisions.
I apologize, Fr. Joe. I was out of line.
If there is a more public forum for me to speak, where I can attempt to make amends in proportion to whatever harm I have caused you, I am happy to repost my words there, too.
Wishing you a blessed Lent,
Mark Andrews
Posted by: Mark Andrews | February 25, 2008 at 03:25 AM
@grega: I'm in a committed and loving relationship, so you should feel free to adopt. ;) Of course when an unchanging moral law is applied in different circumstances, it will result in different actions - I didn't know that's what you meant, and so I apologize for my criticism. [As a Canadian, though, I would dispute your claim of population increase; Europe and Canada are on our way down, and it's not looking pretty.]
@Father: "The Church grows by constantly releasing new and old heresies from herself" (Friedrich Heer, Intellectual History of Europe) - I'm sorry you tired of the game. I don't think young seminarians are hostile to the phrase "spirit of Vatican II" as much as tired of it being misused. As you point out, it can be used to rationalize abuses, as well as in the sense intended by JPII.
It's possible that they will "grow out of it," as you say; I hope that in their priesthood they reflect the maturity and idealism of JPII and Pope Benedict. I'm very happy with them so far.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 26, 2008 at 01:06 AM
Don't know why everybody feels the need to apologize. Guess I should apologize too.
Anyway, Catherine, whatever maturity and idealism one may admire in our popes, their teachings seem to be incorrect on some issues, with grave consequences. What do you think of the following? http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/26/health.religion
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 26, 2008 at 11:58 AM
By the way, Catherine, I am still a defender of orthodoxy, believe it or not, -- but thanks to long and sustained study of the Fathers my notion of what orthodoxy means has broadened and deepened. Keep in mind the hierarchy of truths -- the central truths are profound mysteries -- for instance the doctrine of grace or the divinity of Christ -- the peripheral doctrines need to be seen from that center out.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 26, 2008 at 12:08 PM
Well, Fr. Joe, I can un-apologize if you like , Mark
Posted by: Mark Andrews | February 26, 2008 at 12:13 PM
I disagree with your assessment of the pope's teachings. Actually, I come from having read Why Humanae Vitae Was Right, edited by Dr. Janet Smith (highly recommended).
The article you proposed for my perusal didn't impress me much. The Church teaches 1) not to have sex outside of marriage; 2) not to use contraceptives; 3) not to abort children. The author claims that people are ignoring the Church on 1 and 3, yet following 2 - without giving any real reasons for why he supposes this to be the case.
An interesting thought exercise would be to bring back the whole question say, a hundred years. Contraception and abortion weren't easily available - were there millions of illegal abortions (for which the Church was not yet to blame)? I don't know. Has society changed since then? Definitely. Are we no longer able to take responsibility for our sexuality (and I don't mean by contracepting; I mean by saying 'no' to things we want to do)? I don't think the human person has changed, despite changes in society.
I believe John Paul II was absolutely right in Love and Responsibility. And the theology of the body is only the tip of the iceberg - we're on the edge of a lot of new things, and things which go back to tradition; look at Thomistic Personalism and the phenomenological movement.
As for the Church Fathers, as a friend of mine put it the other day, "they were free to believe what is now heresy, because it had not yet been defined." One duty of the Church is to teach the truth, and if we can't become more and more specific about what truth is by denying error, we can't become more perfect (c.f. my quote from Heer). So, I would say that orthodoxy is continually being narrowed and deepened, to use your analogy; we're eliminating more errors and understanding more truth.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 27, 2008 at 12:26 PM
"An interesting thought exercise would be to bring back the whole question say, a hundred years. Contraception and abortion weren't easily available - were there millions of illegal abortions (for which the Church was not yet to blame)?"
Infanticide was widely practiced in Europe and Japan (see Lafleur, Liquid Life for the Japanese case). Moral theologians were unbelievably lax about abortion, permitting it, for example, if the scandal of a girl's pregnancy might spoil her brother's marriage prospects; with no particular objection from the Vatican. Generally the Church was quite realistic in facing up to human nature as it is, in its imperfections -- as in Augustine's remark, "Take away brothels, and what disorders will ensue in human affairs!" (a remark he did not retract in his Retractationes).
"Are we no longer able to take responsibility for our sexuality (and I don't mean by contracepting; I mean by saying 'no' to things we want to do)? I don't think the human person has changed, despite changes in society."
From my point of view, while a given sexual act may be morally problematic, to use a contraceptive is always a moral act, in that it protects oneself and one's partner from disease or unwanted pregnancy. The condom-bonfires of Philippines bishops, and the impeding of the use of condoms by bishops in AIDS-ravaged Africa, and the advice of the Vatican, pronounced by Monsignor Carlo Caffarra, that women with an AIDS-infected husband should have unprotected sex with him, trusting in Providence -- are thus not only deeply damaging on the plane of public health, but also morally incorrect. For more see http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE4D81730F93AA15752C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all.
"As for the Church Fathers, as a friend of mine put it the other day, "they were free to believe what is now heresy, because it had not yet been defined." One duty of the Church is to teach the truth, and if we can't become more and more specific about what truth is by denying error, we can't become more perfect (c.f. my quote from Heer)."
This is a very oppressive model of Development of Doctrine. Look instead to Newman on the unfolding of the Christian Idea in history.
In any case, the issue of pre-Nicene Fathers teaching what later would be branded as subordinationism is not uppermost in my mind. More something along the lines of what Sarah Coakley talks about in reference to Chalcedon, that its "horos" was not so much a "definition" as the clearing of a "horizon".
" So, I would say that orthodoxy is continually being narrowed and deepened, to use your analogy; we're eliminating more errors and understanding more truth."
Karl Rahner predicted that the heresy of the future would come from the right and be based on a narrow conception of the nature of religious truth. One of the many signs he was correct is that the right wing in the church today are very quick to brand Rahner himself a heretic!
The Irish Bishops lately deplored the decrease of the government tax on condoms (more expensive in Ireland than anywhere else in Europe). This foolish intervention met just raised eyebrows and ironic chuckles from the people.
But the sale of contraceptives was illegal in Ireland until recently and the bishops, who had much greater power and influence, fought against legalization; Paul VI scolded Garrett Fitzgerald, the Irish prime minister, for his alleged "liberal agenda" in legalizing the sale of contraceptives.
So if even in a Western European country the Church has an effective role in blocking access to contraceptives, what must be the case in Africa and the Philippines?
"The Church teaches 1) not to have sex outside of marriage; 2) not to use contraceptives; 3) not to abort children. The author claims that people are ignoring the Church on 1 and 3, yet following 2 - without giving any real reasons for why he supposes this to be the case."
An African woman, monogamously married, and faithful to church teaching, will fail to protect herself against her AIDS-infected husband because of her bishop's teaching on condoms. In fact enlightened Catholic priests and sisters distribute condoms and urge people not to have unprotected sex. But the Church may have made a huge contribution to mortality and infection in Africa by its obdurate attitude. And it is not good enough for Benedict XVI to tell the African bishops that he is helping Africans fight AIDS by teaching them continence.
As to Janet Smith, she is a right wing ideologist-philosopher in the line of Elizabeth Anscombe and Ralph McInerny. What is her pastoral or theological experience? The fact that she is published by Ignatius Press does not vouch for theological credibility.
I reviewed "Love and Responsibility", too kindly, in 1978 -- it is a narrow-minded, heavy-handed book, showing very little sense of the richness of human experience. One of its theses is that masturbation damages your physical and psychological health -- which the author had no qualifications to suggest and which no medical authority today, as far as I know, would claim. And the discussion of "modesty" in that book was wearisome -- the world of Pius XII.
Papolatry means farewell to critical reason and callous indifference to the sufferings of real human beings, especially women. Papolatry is also, of course, a heresy.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 27, 2008 at 03:52 PM
Hahaha... I felt kind of bad criticizing your perspective in my earlier posts, just because it's kind of mean to point out the scoreboard to the losing team. And of course, because you are in persona Christi.
But, goodness - some of your examples... If I were arguing for abortion for women's rights, I wouldn't cite an instance where a girl has an abortion in order to facilitate her brother's marriage. If a woman has to kill her unborn child, society has failed her; merely killing the child won't help her deal with the pain, poverty, abuse, etc. that are her real problems. It's a bandaid solution, and one that is pushed on women to allow society (and men who demand sex without consequences - or, in your example, good marriage prospects) to justify themselves and convince themselves that everything is fine.
And while the Church "faces up to human nature as it is, with its imperfections," to suggest that it accepts these imperfections is going a bit far.
I could probably imitate Rahner by predicting a narrow-mindedness in the Church, and have my predictions fulfilled, too, if I tried. Interesting how you bring "right" and "left" into this discussion; I would have kept to "true" and "false."
If you agree with Newman that the Catholic Church redeems the individual thought patterns and spiritualities that make it up, why worry about Smith, McInerny and Pope John Paul II? Their thought is brought to perfection in Catholicism, isn't it? If you want to argue that we should tolerate everything except intolerance, you would strip Catholicism down very quickly to a series of platitudes. That was done, in the seventies. There are still some older folk trying to inspire the same bitter rebelliousness, but most of my generation has realized that it's easier to rebel by throwing over the Church altogether.
Those of us who still take the Church seriously do so because we love her. (We also love modesty because we have experienced the degradation of porn and masturbation. But it's new to me that JPII claimed it damages one's physical health - where is that?) And the claim that JPII's writing shows "little sense of the richness of human experience" is...odd. Have you reviewed "The Acting Person," by any chance? It's hard to believe that someone who came up with the vertical transcendence of the will doesn't understand human experience.
I am a woman, and I try not to be callous, indifferent, or to worship the pope. I am not a misologist, however - nor a misogamist.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 28, 2008 at 08:34 AM
"If I were arguing for abortion for women's rights, I wouldn't cite an instance where a girl has an abortion in order to facilitate her brother's marriage."
Well, I only cited it to give a sense of the texture of history. I don't agree with it, or with Augustine's views on "brothels". I do suggest that less fanaticism and more listening would do the Church good today.
"And while the Church "faces up to human nature as it is, with its imperfections," to suggest that it accepts these imperfections is going a bit far."
I suggest that the Church should take into account the social factors you mention. Condemnation in a vacuum is not helping anyone.
"Interesting how you bring "right" and "left" into this discussion; I would have kept to "true" and "false.""
Truth and falsehood are never exclusively on one side.
"Smith, McInerny and Pope John Paul II... Their thought is brought to perfection in Catholicism, isn't it?"
No, insofar as their thought conduces to mortality due to the lack of condoms, to callousness about human life and flourishing here below, and to acute misery for many women and gays, it is a distortion of what Catholicism should be.
"If you want to argue that we should tolerate everything except intolerance,"
Perhaps we should be less tolerant of the right-wing that are imposing false ideas and practices, and preventing the Church from being a light to the nations.
"Most of my generation has realized that it's easier to rebel by throwing over the Church altogether."
Of course, but constructive movement for reform within the Church is the more Christian way.
"Have you reviewed "The Acting Person," by any chance?"
No, because I found it boring. But it was reviewed at length by its translator Ms Tymienecka, and she had nothing good to say about it!
"I am not a misologist, however - nor a misogamist."
There is logos and logos, gamos and gamos. I want to extend the blessing of marriage in an analogical participation to same-sex couples. Surely that is the opposite of misogamy? And I defend my claim by rational arguments -- which include the rational procedure of taking the phenomenology of gay couples' experience seriously (something John Paul II was incapable of). Surely that is not misology?
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 28, 2008 at 10:09 PM
Sigh... I know truth and falsehood are never entirely on one side. That's why I found it irrelevant for you to insist on using the term "right wing." It's an ad hominem attack, only relevant to someone who is already your political ally.
Your comment about "callousness about human life" is pure irony, coming from someone advocating abortion.
Funny that Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka would dislike "The Acting Person," since by many reports she engaged in interpretive reading when translating - even to the point of co-authorship. On the other hand, that might explain why...
To tell you the truth, I'm interested in a phenomenological exploration of the gay experience, too. I hope JH gets started.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 29, 2008 at 03:04 AM
By the way, I didn't mean to attack you with the labels 'misogamist' and 'misologist' - I was just defending myself against what you associated with 'papolatry' and JH, and by extension, myself.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | February 29, 2008 at 12:57 PM
How dare you call me "someone advocating abortion". I am advocating that the Church learn from the experience of the country in Europe which has the lowest abortion rate (see the Guardian piece), and thus halp reduce the incidence of abortion (which is highest in Catholic countries).
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | February 29, 2008 at 04:00 PM
Hmmm...looking back at the posts, what does the "phenomenology of gay couple's experience," or more generally a "phenomenology of experience" - any person's experience - have to do with, say, a single deposit of Faith embodied in a 3-way dialogue between Scripture, Tradition and the authoritative teaching of the Church's pastors?
Fr. Joe, are you proposing that the phenomenology of experience is a kind of internal forum in moral decision making?
Posted by: Mark Andrews | March 03, 2008 at 02:37 AM
Hi Mark,
Sorry - I know you weren't addressing me, but I don't want you to leave thinking that phenomenology is a way to avoid the truth. It's more a way to examine natural law (which includes moral law) from one's own experiences. Because what the Church teaches is not only morally binding but true, we can see this truth from different angles, including the angle of experience.
An example that comes to mind is NFP - not only do we follow the Church's teaching on contraception, we can see how this obedience affects the experiences of married people, or as you say, "who is happier." By the way, I like your idea of keeping the Church as a 'control' group - nice thought.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | March 03, 2008 at 04:08 AM
Phenomenology, experience, can hardly be left out of account in the development of moral teaching. Every such development has been prompted by the weight of empirical testimony.
Dreadnought used to offer a more interesting phenomenology of gay experience, though inconsistent and conflicted. I pointed out the inconsistency between his puritanism and the louche pics that lavishly decorated his site. He has now withdrawn these, and his site now looks drab and bare. His phenomenology of the sexual and even of the affective aspect of gay experience seems to me reductive and denigratory. His admirer Courage Man has a blog that is truly oppressive -- a dark hole of wrestling with demons. http://courageman.blogspot.com
All of his needs to be counter-balanced by the testimony of happily coupled gays, whose relationship is accepted by their families and churches.
Archbishop Zollitsch has taken an unambiguous position on civil unions: "As a Catholic my ideal is obviously marriage and the famiily", but "if there are persons with this predisposition, the State can adopt the opportune regulations, even if I think the concept of homosexual marriage is mistaken, since it puts it on the same plane as marriage between man and woman". Could the revolution within Catholicism be taking root in Ratzinger's Germany?
Does phenomenology support NFP? The negative experience of many couples, who claim that NFP is more "unnatural" than the pill, should be taken into account, even if one then wants to argue that it is not conclusive.
For the record, I am unhappy with Mr Obama's blithe attitude to abortion. In whisking away the moral objections he is also coming across as a divider rather than the uniter he claims to be. I'm afraid that Mrs Clinton has more presidential substance; maybe he could make her his running-mate.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 03, 2008 at 11:56 AM
I'm afraid Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama are both too attached to the presidency itself to accept a lesser role. To be vice president is to be obscured, unless the incumbent is quite devious (examples include Agnew and Chaney).
Back to experience...isn't there an epistemic problem with an over-dependence on experience?
Posted by: Mark Andrews | March 03, 2008 at 12:20 PM
Here is an interesting letter of Obama:
I’m running for President to build an America that lives up to our founding
promise of equality for all – a promise that extends to our gay brothers
and sisters. It’s wrong to have millions of Americans living as second-class
citizens in this nation. And I ask for your support in this election so that
together we can bring about real change for all LGBT Americans.
Equality is a moral imperative. That’s why throughout my career, I have fought to eliminate
discrimination against LGBT Americans. In Illinois, I co-sponsored a fully inclusive bill that
prohibited discrimination on the basis of both sexual orientation and gender identity, extending
protection to the workplace, housing, and places of public accommodation. In the U.S. Senate, I have co-sponsored bills that would equalize tax treatment for same-sex couples and provide benefits to domestic partners of federal employees. And as president, I will place the weight of my administration behind the enactment of the Matthew Shepard Act to outlaw hate crimes and a fully inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act to outlaw workplace discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.
As your President, I will use the bully pulpit to urge states to treat same-sex couples with full
equality in their family and adoption laws. I personally believe that civil unions represent the best way to secure that equal treatment. But I also believe that the federal government should not stand in the way of states that want to decide on their own how best to pursue equality for gay and
lesbian couples — whether that means a domestic partnership, a civil union, or a civil marriage.
Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal
only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does. I
have also called for us to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and I have worked to improve the Uniting
American Families Act so we can afford same-sex couples the same rights and obligations as
married couples in our immigration system.
The next president must also address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. When it comes to prevention, we do not have to choose between values and science. While abstinence education should be part of any strategy, we also need to use common sense. We should have age-appropriate sex
education that includes information about contraception. We should pass the JUSTICE Act to
combat infection within our prison population. And we should lift the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. In addition, local governments can protect public health by distributing contraceptives.
We also need a president who’s willing to confront the stigma – too often tied to homophobia
– that continues to surround HIV/AIDS. I confronted this stigma directly in a speech to
evangelicals at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, and will continue to speak out as president.
That is where I stand on the major issues of the day. But having the right positions on the issues
is only half the battle. The other half is to win broad support for those positions. And winning
broad support will require stepping outside our comfort zone. If we want to repeal DOMA, repeal
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and implement fully inclusive laws outlawing hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace, we need to bring the message of LGBT equality to skeptical audiences as well
as friendly ones – and that’s what I’ve done throughout my career. I brought this message of
inclusiveness to all of America in my keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention. I talked about the need to fight homophobia when I announced my candidacy for President, and I have
been talking about LGBT equality to a number of groups during this campaign – from local LGBT
activists to rural farmers to parishioners at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where Dr. Martin
Luther King once preached.
Just as important, I have been listening to what all Americans have to say. I will never compromise
on my commitment to equal rights for all LGBT Americans. But neither will I close my ears to
the voices of those who still need to be convinced. That is the work we must do to move forward together. It is difficult. It is challenging. And it is necessary.
Americans are yearning for leadership that can empower us to reach for what we know is possible.
I believe that we can achieve the goal of full equality for the millions of LGBT people in this
country. To do that, we need leadership that can appeal to the best parts of the human spirit.
Join with me, and I will provide that leadership. Together, we will achieve real equality for all
Americans, gay and straight alike.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 03, 2008 at 12:39 PM
A nasty suspicion: Obama tells his audiences what they like to hear, just like a... politician.
"epistemic problem with an over-dependence on experience"?
Yes, of course there are other sources of knowledge, notably logical reason and authoritative revelation. But the latter sources hang in the air unless there is a firm empirical basis (a possible exception is some pure forms of logic and math). Moreover, if the deliveries of experience contradict the findings of reason or the claims of authority, or make them increasingly implausible, then we've got a Naturally both scientists and religious teachers will expect the contradictions to be solved and the implausibilities to diminish -- but if they do not, if they persist painfully, then a paradigm shift may be in the process of gestation.
I looked up Dreadnought's site just now and discovered that there is a piquant remnant of the photographic phenomenology that struck me as "louche": http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2004/06/dreadgallery-2-rooftop-shoot.html
Courage Man seems to have cheered up since he became more of a political crusader.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 03, 2008 at 04:18 PM
Seems that one can allways find folks that claim they see much sense in controversial official catholic teachings just to discover that the actual christenheit thinks otherwise.
Actual catholic parents in overwhelming numbers do not practice pure NFP.
Acutal catholics would have no problem seeing female priests. Actual catholics would prefer a healthy mix between married and non married hetero and homosexual clergy. A mix that perhaps actually resembled real percentages of such folks in the populace.
We should have about a 50 50 split between women and men - we should have about 5% -10 % homosexuals.
Seems to me right now we would need 50% more Priests and we would do well if we could afford to be a bit more selective.
Frankly I would like to see a bit more emphasis on true leadership qualities.
It seems to me that we have perhaps well-meaning pious folks - folks however who have no business heading a parish.
The disasters will keep coming here in the West.
We set ourself up for trouble. The bulk of the great male and female catholic natural leaders will not enter the Priesthood.
No organization can deal with such system immanent fundamental shortcomings in the long run.
Posted by: grega | March 04, 2008 at 06:42 AM
Grega, I agree. There has been an increase in the number of priests under John Paul II, but in third world countries where the priesthood is a passport to success, indeed to survival -- not in the West. Again, I am not sure if this increase in clergy has kept pace with the general increase in Catholic population, or if the latter has kept pace with the increase in world population. The Papal Primacy as currently understood is a holdover from the Middle Ages (see G. Lafont, "Imaginer l'Eglise catholique", Paris, 1995 -- who quotes early essays of Ratzinger in proof of this point!), and Catholics are clinging to it desperately as the fetish of their threatened identity. This is not the way forward, and is proving itself not to be so in a catalogue of daily disasters.
The Anglican Church in Ireland now boasts higher numbers than at any time since 1930 (when it was being decimated by a subtle form of ethnic cleansing). The new members come from the disillusioned ranks of Roman Catholic laity and clergy. Rome's errors are replenishing our sister churches!
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 04, 2008 at 10:10 AM
Oh, and Mark; I don't think I was really clear... Phenomenology is a method of philosophy, not a social science. It deals with universal undeniable experiences, not statistics.
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | March 04, 2008 at 11:17 PM
"No organization can deal with such system immanent fundamental shortcomings in the long run."
Hahahaha.... this said of perhaps the longest-running institution we have.
And I happen to be an actual Catholic, with actual Catholic friends and family. (It seems as though there are always people willing to change Church teachings to pander to the desires of the majority... What happened to the spirit of the saints, or, for that matter, of Socrates?)
Posted by: Catherine Nolan | March 04, 2008 at 11:30 PM
Dreadnought has defended justice Scalia against the critique of Louis Seidman in the following terms: "The idea that sodomy or other forms of non-procreative sex acts (insertion of one's genitals or digits into the digestive tract or elsewhere) might be, on some shoddy moral, pseudo-scientific, etc. grounds somehow as impressive (morally, biologically, spiritually, emotionally, etc.) as marital / conjugal sex is certainly a going political claim, but it has little or no moral, religious or epistemological / logical weight."
Apart from the question of where this leaves kissing, and other forms of foreplay common to both gay and straight, one must deplore the tone of Dreadnought's writing, so unfitting in a legal paper and so different from the calm and measured reasoning of Seidman.
Louis Michael Seidman, "Gay Sex and Marriage, the Reciprocal Disadvantage Problem, and the Crisis in Liberal Constitutional Theory" (July 10, 2007). Georgetown Law. Georgetown Law Faculty Working Papers. Paper 33.
Summary: http://lsr.nellco.org/georgetown/fwps/papers/33
PDF file: http://lsr.nellco.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1033&context=georgetown/fwps
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 25, 2008 at 02:53 PM
"No organization can deal with such system immanent fundamental shortcomings in the long run."
Surely you mean, no organization can afford not to deal with them. The Church, upheld by the Holy Spirit, is perfectly capable of dealing with them, notably through the instrument of an Ecumenical Council.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 25, 2008 at 02:56 PM
Dreadnought claims to represent a young generation who have outgrown the naive liberalism of their elders. Yet, as Seidman recounds, "in a Gallup poll conducted in May 2007, eighteen to thirty four year olds indicated that they thought homosexuality was an acceptable alternative life-style by a margin of 75% to 25%. Respondents over the age of fifty five disagreed with the same proposition by a margin of 51% to 45%."
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 25, 2008 at 03:11 PM
Seidman argues that a moral case can be made on both sides of the constitional debate about protecting gay rights and that the law cannot pretend to be a neutral observer. Dreadnought dismisses the moral case for gay rights as follows: "It is an outgrowth of anti-human ideologies current during the middle years of the last century (c.f. the 'Quiet Revolution' in Quebec). These have - thank G-d - little or no grip on my generation... and their influence on lawyers and politicians is quickly eroding, ceding ground to more humane ideas."
It would be interesting to know how many Canadians of Dreadnought's "generation" (by which he really means the conservative minority of his generation, see above), would wish to undo the "Quiet Revolution", described in Wikipedia as follows: "The provincial government took over the fields of health care and education, which were in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church. It created ministries of Education and Health, expanded the public service, and made massive investments in the public education system and provincial infrastructure. The government allowed unionization of the civil service. It took measures to increase Québécois control over the province's economy and nationalized electricity production and distribution."
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | March 25, 2008 at 03:19 PM
There are things I like about both your and Heard's/Pope John Paul II's arguments.
With you I'm with civil libertarianism only as a libertarian I agree with Alan Dershowitz that the solution is to get the state out of the marriage business.
You used a common liberal device of equating homosexuality with ethnicity (being black for example), which seems to slide from civil law to trying to argue that a same-sex Sacrament of Holy Matrimony is possible. That breaks down of course because being of a race is not a temptation to sin, which Catholics and conservative Protestants believe homosexuality is.
But the state ought not to be in the business of trying to extirpate vice. There is no such thing as consensual crime. If it doesn't harm others it's none of the state's or my business.
Posted by: The young fogey | April 05, 2008 at 10:43 PM
It is singularly unscholarly to stoop to presumption and imputing motives of those with whom you disagree. I refer to your 3/30/08 comment in which you place Courage Man and Dreadnought on your psychological couch and attempt an assassination of character. Very unworthy behavior for a Christian.
Posted by: Clayton | April 26, 2008 at 09:53 PM
The fantastical descriptions of Dreadnought's sexual life refers simply to my query about the louche pictures on his site; I have never referred to Dreadnought's personal life.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | April 27, 2008 at 03:26 AM
Dreadnought has now published a murky apologia-cum-apology for his youthful ravings, which he vows to keep perpetually archived rather than delete them as indiscretions. http://johnheard.blogspot.com/2010/07/statement-from-john-heard.html
He makes the odd claim that Catholic liberals of "the time" (only a few years ago) had no model of gay life to offer except clandestinity or promiscuity. In fact he devoted all his efforts to attacking the model of loving companionship and the push for legal recognition of same-sex unions. Perhaps he now realizes that he was spitting in the wind of history.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | September 24, 2010 at 02:12 PM
A hypocrite is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump and make the speech for conservation.
Posted by: Victoria Amateur | April 26, 2011 at 12:35 AM
"being of a race is not a temptation to sin, which Catholics and conservative Protestants believe homosexuality is."
Actually, the documents Persona Humana and Homosexualitatis Problema accept that the homosexual orientation is an inborn disposition; indeed the second document refers to "homosexual persons" and not just to persons bothered by a temptation to sin. The Catholic Church is not entirely stupid.
Posted by: Spirit of Vatican II | April 26, 2011 at 04:54 PM