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Post by maolsheachlann on Jul 31, 2019 8:43:56 GMT
Edward Feser discusses why the sexual revolution gets more militant as it progresses, proclaiming "it's forbidden to forbid". (In case you think I made that one up,"c'est interdit a interdire" was indeed used as a slogan during the Paris "May events" of 1968). edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/07/psychoanalyzing-sexual-revolutionary.html#moreI want to register one clear disagreement with Feser: EXTRACT For another thing, those who would defend traditional sexual morality need to have a realistic understanding of the cultural situation. As I have said, some conservative religious believers lack this. For example, even contemporary Catholic churchmen, on the rare occasions when they talk about sexual morality at all, often do so only in the vaguest and most inoffensive way. They will bend over backwards to attribute good motives to their opponents and to concede the alleged injustice and insensitivity of past upholders of Christian morality, even though such courtesies are never reciprocated by the liberal side... END OF EXTRACT Now,there is a point at which the assumption of good faith has to be discarded - I haven't read the Platonic dialogues for many years, but I was recently looking at a book by Eric Vogelin and came across a description of how in one dialogue (I think PROTAGORAS) Socrates threatens to walk out unless his sophist opponent stops word-chopping and addresses the issues at stake. That makes me feel a whole lot better about the time I threw the atheist timewasters off the board. Nevertheless, what Feser misses is that we do need to discuss and acknowledge past instances of the distortion and misuse of traditional sexual morality, not to appease the darkside but simply and solely for the love of truth and from desire to prevent such things happening again. Because honesty is a virtue. That's one reason why I've been wanting to find out more about Bernanos after reading DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and seeing the Bresson film adaptations. Because he's about facing and acknowledging the darkest forms of human evil, trying to face them with a pure heart and realising that even there God's mercy is with us. I fully acknowledge BTW that facing cruelty can lead to fascination by cruelty and to participation in it - it seems to me that Bresson succumbed to it in some of his films. But such things must still be faced and we mustn't pretend they don't exist. That's a fair point, and you only have to read St. John Paul II's writings to see how charity and clarity can co-exist. But I suppose Feser is just complaining about the DEGREE to which contemporary Catholic churchmen (as he puts it) soft-soap the message, and go overboard in criticizing the status quo ante, while refusing to ever clearly condemn contemporary sexual mores. I remember feeling bewildered during religion class, in my Catholic secondary school, when we were presented with Catholic teaching on homosexuality. The teacher did indeed affirm that homosexual acts were forbidden, but the emphasis otherwise was entirely upon our presumed homophobia. It seemed such a strange mismatch of message and emphasis. She seemed to be saying that homosexual acts were immoral but to feel any aversion towards them was just as immoral, which tended to suggest that the prohibition was purely arbitrary.
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Post by assisi on Jul 31, 2019 21:15:35 GMT
Edward Feser discusses why the sexual revolution gets more militant as it progresses, proclaiming "it's forbidden to forbid". (In case you think I made that one up,"c'est interdit a interdire" was indeed used as a slogan during the Paris "May events" of 1968). edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/07/psychoanalyzing-sexual-revolutionary.html#moreI want to register one clear disagreement with Feser: EXTRACT For another thing, those who would defend traditional sexual morality need to have a realistic understanding of the cultural situation. As I have said, some conservative religious believers lack this. For example, even contemporary Catholic churchmen, on the rare occasions when they talk about sexual morality at all, often do so only in the vaguest and most inoffensive way. They will bend over backwards to attribute good motives to their opponents and to concede the alleged injustice and insensitivity of past upholders of Christian morality, even though such courtesies are never reciprocated by the liberal side... END OF EXTRACT Now,there is a point at which the assumption of good faith has to be discarded - I haven't read the Platonic dialogues for many years, but I was recently looking at a book by Eric Vogelin and came across a description of how in one dialogue (I think PROTAGORAS) Socrates threatens to walk out unless his sophist opponent stops word-chopping and addresses the issues at stake. That makes me feel a whole lot better about the time I threw the atheist timewasters off the board. Nevertheless, what Feser misses is that we do need to discuss and acknowledge past instances of the distortion and misuse of traditional sexual morality, not to appease the darkside but simply and solely for the love of truth and from desire to prevent such things happening again. Because honesty is a virtue. That's one reason why I've been wanting to find out more about Bernanos after reading DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and seeing the Bresson film adaptations. Because he's about facing and acknowledging the darkest forms of human evil, trying to face them with a pure heart and realising that even there God's mercy is with us. I fully acknowledge BTW that facing cruelty can lead to fascination by cruelty and to participation in it - it seems to me that Bresson succumbed to it in some of his films. But such things must still be faced and we mustn't pretend they don't exist. That's a fair point, and you only have to read St. John Paul II's writings to see how charity and clarity can co-exist. But I suppose Feser is just complaining about the DEGREE to which contemporary Catholic churchmen (as he puts it) soft-soap the message, and go overboard in criticizing the status quo ante, while refusing to ever clearly condemn contemporary sexual mores. I remember feeling bewildered during religion class, in my Catholic secondary school, when we were presented with Catholic teaching on homosexuality. The teacher did indeed affirm that homosexual acts were forbidden, but the emphasis otherwise was entirely upon our presumed homophobia. It seemed such a strange mismatch of message and emphasis. She seemed to be saying that homosexual acts were immoral but to feel any aversion towards them was just as immoral, which tended to suggest that the prohibition was purely arbitrary. Our hierarchy are indeed far too supine in these matters. As Hibernicus said we need to acknowledge the sins of the past but instead of supplying appropriate context the neutral listener often has his or her prejudices confirmed and comes away hating the Church even more. For example, in England in the 20th century it was common to discriminate against blacks and Irish in housing and jobs. Catholics were second class citizens in NI. Nearly half the people I know experienced some bullying at school and none of them are homosexuals. People were looked down on because of their class or status. In other words there were and will always be, sadly, injustices against all variety of people that some view as different. Indeed it can now be argued that it is Christianity that is the religion that is suffering most prejudice worldwide. It could also be pointed out that the new PC order, of which homosexuals are one of the most privileged groups are currently showing no mercy to anyone who dissents from the celebration of homosexuality, often depriving individual and families of their jobs and livelihoods. This too is a truth that should be pointed out by out Churchmen but rarely is.
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Post by hibernicus on Aug 2, 2019 22:19:44 GMT
This is a good post as regards throwing out the baby with the bathwater: www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/impure-motives-of-purity-culture-critics/Part of the problem I think is the "hermeneutic of rupture"; the present Irish church apparat tend to see the pre-Vatican II church as simply alien, rather than feeling enough affinity with it to try to understand it. Another part is the desire not to set the church as a triumphalist guide above society, which in practice translates into trying to go with the flow and making themselves ridiculous into the bargain. The third is that the church in Ireland is unintellectual and often anti-intellectual; one area in which it has faithfully preserved and greatly magnified a flaw of the pre-Vatican II era.
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Post by hibernicus on May 14, 2021 19:42:58 GMT
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