Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming's Bishop Steven Biegler on Fiducia Supplicans.

Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming's Bishop Steven Biegler on Fiducia Supplic...:

Wyoming's Bishop Steven Biegler on Fiducia Supplicans.

Chances are, if you took a poll, most Catholics in the pews here on Sunday couldn't tell you who the Bishop for the Diocese of Cheyenne is.

And that is as it should be.

By and large, if things are going relatively well, there's no real reason for you to know who the Bishop is.  An observant Catholic no doubt knows who the parish priest(s) is/are, who the deacon is, if there is one, and probably knows who the priests are in the across town parishes.  And they may have kept track of a favorite priest once he was reassigned.  But the Bishop?  Well, for the most part, they don't really interact with him.

Now, having said that, there's always observant who do know who the Bishop is, and of course he's prayed for, along with the Pope, every Mass.  So, yes, I know who the Bishop is, and I've known who the Bishops were going back into my teenage years.

Having an opinion on how well a Bishop is doing is another matter.

The first time that I can recall a Bishop was from when I was a kid.  We were going fishing and as my father, in our 1965 Chevrolet pickup, entered The Narrows, a car was beside the road and a couple of men standing by it.  "That's the Bishop", my father stated, and we pulled off.  Their car had broken down.  The Bishop and a priest got in, and we took them back to town, which mean we had four adults and one child in the cab of a pickup.

At that time, that wasn't abnormal.

"How's the fishing?" is what I recalled him saying.

That would have been Bishop Newell, who stepped down in 1978, and who passed away in 1987.  He was a Coloradan.  He would have been nearly the same age as my father's father and mother.  He'd been the Bishop since 1951, although in later hears there was a co-Bishop (not the right word).  He was well liked.

He was the Bishop at my Confirmation, and actually picked my Confirmation Name, as in the mushy days of the 1970s, I'd somehow failed to pick one and nobody had required me to.  He picked "John".

The next Bishop was Bishop Hart.

We didn't react much to Bishop Hart, although I can recall that my father was not a fan of the Bishop's Appeal, which we still have.  He didn't approve of some of the things it was used for, and probably still wouldn't.

Bishop Hart was later accused of improper conduct with a few boys in his prior diocese and at least one here.  He was thoroughly investigated by the police and DA's office twice, and both times they chose not to prosecute, feeling the accusations unwarranted.  Under the current, and maybe prior, Bishop there was an ecclesiastical followup on this, with the same going all the way to the Vatican, with the Vatican also feeling there wasn't enough there to sanction him.  Nonetheless, the current Bishop has been of the view, basically, that he was guilty and taken that position officially.  He really focused on it for a long time.

That's been one of the reasons that I've been somewhat critical of the current Bishop.  

Americans claim to believe that you are innocent until proven guilty, but we don't.  We should at least pretend that we do officially, however, if the process is to mean anything.  And to have had two DA's and a Vatican process all say that there wasn't enough there should mean that we at least cease to have a focus on an accusation.

This is moreover all the more the case in a diocese in which the population is highly transient, and most Catholics here weren't here when Bishop Hart was the bishop.  Indeed, the current bishop has had a quiet focus on Hispanic immigrants, which also were, ironically, a focus of Bishop Hart, and most of the Hispanics in Wyoming, if they were even alive when he was Bishop, were probably living in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chihuahua.

And no, I'm not joking in that observation.

We've had a series of Bishops in recent years, and at least in my observation, there's some quiet discontent on this one in general, at least in some quarters.

Bishop David Ricken, who was originally from Dodge City, Kansas, was really popular, and a genuinely nice guy.  He was later made the Bishop of Green Bay. After him, we had Bishop Etienne, who was quite popular in no small part because he was a farmer and a hunter, and seemed like one of us. That may be why Pope Benedict picked him.  He later went on to be assigned to the Archdiocese of Anchorage, and is now in the Archdiocese of Seattle.

Bishop Biegler is from South Dakota and should be regarded as one of us, but it's been my observation that he's never been popular with a selection of Catholics here. The more conservative a Catholic is, the least likely he is to be a fan of Bishop Biegler.  That may simply be because he was appointed by Pope Francis, whom conservative Catholics here aren't huge fans of, which is true of a selection of conservative Catholics across the U.S.  As noted, he's really focused on the Priest Abuse scandals, and oddly enough that may be part of the reason he's not been hugely popular.  We're a minority religion here and Wyoming did not have a huge problem. There were some priests implicated, but it was quite limited in general.  Focusing on it tends to put Catholics in disdain by non-Catholics, a problem in a population where you are already regarded as odd for being Catholic.  Indeed, just the other day a Baptist minister made a joke at my expense for being a Catholic, apparently unaware that protestant denominations have had just as big, if not bigger, problem, but that it largely goes unnoticed as the press really doesn't follow Protestantism very much.

Teachers, as we've noted, have the largest rate of icky transgressions.

Anyhow, the whisperers tend to suggest that Bishop Biegler is one of Francis' bishops, by which they mean that they believe that Francis is a liberal who is pushing the Church into accommodation with homosexuality.  That likely misjudges Francis.  What it doesn't misjudge is that the US has had a selection of disappointing Bishops, while it also had a selection of outstanding one.  A lot of the noteworthy, outstanding ones are very conservative and orthodox.  Pope Francis has, at the same time, criticized the American Church for being in essence conservative and not on board with a lot of what he's trying to do, although it's quite difficult to tell what Pope Francis is trying to do.

He's trying to do something with Fiducia Supplicans.

Fiducia Supplicans was hugely upsetting to a lot of orthodox and conservative Catholics.

I've discussed it elsewhere, but one of the things that I noted is that I sort of think I see the failure to recognize a trend at work here.  The Western World, following World War Two, used its fast wealth to expand its wealth to the point where most of the problems that predated 1945 didn't really impact us the way they used to.  We've always wondered what we'd do if had a lot of time and money on our hands, and it turns out that we think only of ourselves, and then we begin to think a lot about our genitals.  It probably makes sense on an evolutionary biological level, but it's resulted in a lot of disorder and falsity.  

And because it's been misunderstood, throughout the West, people have convinced themselves that the whole world is discovering that "homosexuality" and "transgenderism" have been deeply hidden wide spared human traits when, in fact, there's no good evidence f that at all, and the former characterization is actually scientifically suspect, and the latter one doesn't even exist.  The Church in the West, urged on by those who believe that if only this was understood, or in some liberal quarters accommodated, has a significant element working on this topic in the belief that only if some accommodation could be reached, all those with these sexual attributes would come back to Mass.

In the wider world, however, the West is declining and the Church in other regions rising.  People in Africa and Asia look at this and think the West has gone nuts, and in fact most people in most regions of the globe do not view this as conduct that's normal, but the opposite.  And scientifically, they're likely right. So the global trend is Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular is towards orthodoxy.  Indeed, the young everywhere are turning towards conservatism and orthodoxy.  It's hard for leadership of major institutions to realize this, however, as they're focused on the West, where while this has probably jumped the shark it's not obvious, and they remain lead by the Baby Boom generation which is focused on the trends of its own era.

Fiducia Supplicans caused quite a reaction based on a person's position and region. The Church in Africa pretty much said it wasn't going there, blessing wise.  Pope Francis made a later statement which upset some people by excepting the African attitude as cultural, which again is something I feel that wasn't accurately assessed.  Fiducia Supplicans, changes no doctrine at all, of course, but its the focus on it that caused ire in conservative quarters, as it seems to be focused on homosexuality, and it was misunderstood at first as to its application.  

In the US a few Bishops in written statements, and some individual priests publically, have taken the Pope's direction to reflect on how to apply it locally and determined not to apply it.  The Vatican in January indicated that Bishops should not stop priests from applying it.  In Wyoming, not much was said of any official nature at all.  

Now Bishop Biegler has, in the Wyoming Catholic Register.  While it is a copyrighted article, as we're commenting on it, we're going to set the entire article out below.

Questions have arisen about the blessing that may be given to couples in same-sex unions or in heterosexual unions lived outside of a Church marriage, as stated in Fiducia Supplicans (FS). So, I would like to address the major concerns. First, Pope Francis did not change the doctrine of marriage. He stated clearly, “Since the Church has always considered only those sexual relations that are lived out within marriage to be morally licit, the Church does not have the power to confer its liturgical blessing when that would somehow offer a form of moral legitimacy to a union that presumes to be a marriage or to an extra-marital sexual practice” (11, FS).

A Gesture of Pastoral Closeness

Thus, a liturgical blessing is not to be given, but a pastoral blessing may be given. As explained by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), “non-ritualized blessings are not a consecration of the person nor of the couple who receives them, they are not a justification of all their actions, and they are not an endorsement of the life that they lead.” Instead a pastoral blessing is a “simple gesture of pastoral closeness.” It expresses the all-encompassing love of God for his children in every circumstance of their lives.

Knowing that they cannot receive Communion, people come forward in the procession seeking a blessing. They want to feel God’s closeness. The priest or deacon asks no questions about the person’s moral life, but simply offers a prayer or blessing. After Mass, often people ask for a blessing over their family, which is given without any inquiry about their marital status. These pastoral blessings express God’s closeness. Pope Francis said, “When a couple spontaneously comes and asks [a priest] for this [blessing], it is not the union that is blessed but simply the persons who together have asked for the blessing.” He explained that “the intention of the pastoral and spontaneous blessings is to show concretely the closeness of the Lord and of the church to all those who, finding themselves in different situations, ask help to continue—sometimes to begin—a journey of faith.”

Some Catholics have expressed concern that people could misinterpret the meaning of a pastoral blessing given to couples who are in a union not officially recognized by the Church. Thus, it is essential to differentiate between a liturgical blessing and a pastoral blessing. The DDF stated, “The real novelty of this Declaration … is not the possibility of blessing couples in irregular situations. It is the invitation to distinguish between two different forms of blessings: ‘liturgical or ritualized’ and ‘spontaneous or pastoral.’”

Confidence in Christ’s Blessing

Yet, there is another significant teaching in Fiducia Supplicans that merits our attention. How strongly it expresses God’s merciful love! This is one reason why many are distraught by FS. Since the beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis’ proclamation of mercy has been embraced by the multitude but rejected by a vociferous minority. FS, once again, firmly proclaims that God’s mercy must be extended to every single person.

The opposition of FS focuses overwhelmingly on blessing those in same-sex relationships rather than those many more men and women who are in heterosexual relationships not deemed valid

by the Church. There is a unique prejudice against people in same-sex unions. They are seen with contempt, like the way Jews looked upon tax collectors.

As a tax collector, Saint Matthew proclaims mercy poignantly. He portrays Christ challenging us to imitate the Father’s mercy. One of my favorite passages is, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Matthew 5:44-45). Do we really believe that our heavenly Father bestows mercy on the just and unjust? Are we seeking to be children of our heavenly Father by extending his love to everyone, the bad and the good alike?

Fiducia Supplicans begins with a quote from Pope Francis who reminds us: “The great blessing of God is Jesus Christ … He is a blessing for all humanity, a blessing that has saved us all. He is the Eternal Word, with whom the Father blessed us ‘while we were still sinners’ (Romans 5:8), as Saint Paul says. He is the Word made flesh, offered for us on the cross.” Are we confident in the blessing that Christ freely offered to sinners? As Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus teaches us, this confidence “is the sole path that leads us to the Love that grants everything.

With confidence, the wellspring of grace overflows into our lives … It is most fitting, then, that we should place heartfelt trust not in ourselves but in the infinite mercy of a God who loves us unconditionally … The sin of the world is great but not infinite, whereas the merciful love of the Redeemer is indeed infinite” (22, FS).

Surprised by Mercy

Micah Kiel wrote: “Mercy is the surprise that people don’t want because it means they have no way of predicting what God will do and to whom God will do it” (America, John Martens, Jan. 5, 2024). For some, this is unnerving, and they react with fear. They see Pope Francis as causing confusion in the Church. Yet, he is actually calling us to internalize Christ’s mercy and boldly proclaim it to the world.

Some protest saying that we need both mercy and truth. Fiducia begins by affirming the truth of Church teaching on marriage, and it proclaims the truth of God’s unconditional blessing for all. Francis challenges us with the truth of mercy. In Amoris Laetitia, he reminded us of the primacy of mercy as we proclaim the truth of the Gospel.

He wrote, “… although it is quite true that concern must be shown for the integrity of the Church’s moral teaching, special care should always be shown to emphasize and encourage the highest and most central values of the Gospel, particularly the primacy of charity as a response to the completely gratuitous offer of God’s love. At times we find it hard to make room for God’s unconditional love in our pastoral activity. We put so many conditions on mercy that we empty it of its concrete meaning … 

That is the worst way of watering down the Gospel … mercy is the fullness of justice and the most radiant manifestation of God’s truth. For this reason, we should always consider ‘inadequate any theological conception which in the end puts in doubt the omnipotence of God and, especially, his mercy’” (Amoris Laetitia, 311).

As we ponder God’s indiscriminate mercy, I will end with a challenge by James Alison, who wrote, “learn to perceive people you might have despised as ‘blessable’ rather than ‘contemptible,’ and then let God’s subtle grace sort out the efficacy of blessing in their – our – lives” (The Tablet, Jan. 4, 2024).

Now Wyoming's Catholics have the Bishop's official view. 

Nothing that he has said is theologically shocking in any fashion.  I'ts all correct.  So people ought to lay off, right?

Well, I doubt they will, if for no other reason than that he didn't 1) say he didn't like it, and 2) seems to support it.

Well, he clearly supports it.

That reason is what will make him unpopular right there.

As noted, this article is in fact very orthodox.  And Bishop Biegler deserves credit for being the first person I've seen to clearly explain the difference between the two categories of blessing the document addresses.  I really hadn't followed that before.

Still, a couple of things.

One thing is a stylistic matter. Bishop Biegler, like the Pope, likes to use "!".

The exclamation mark ought to be eschewed in any serious writing.  It just doesn't work, and it tends to cause most educated readers to be a bit disdainful of whatever was just accented through its use.  

The other is, however, that Bishop Biegler is being mildly disdainful of those who are concerned about Fiducia Supplicans, suggesting that they don't appreciate the inclusiveness of Christianity or that they are dismissive of God's mercy.  And indeed, some of the critics can rightfully be criticized for that.

But some cannot.  Some are concerned that the blessings will in fact be focused exclusively on homosexual couples, and they are at least corrected to that extent, and that this will give the illusion that it approved of, and lead to more.

In fact, the argument, noted here, that the text doesn't really address homosexuality specifically and would also apply to other people with irregular sexual unions, while noted elsewhere, sort of begs a set of questions.

A major part of those conventional sexual unions is that they are conventionally oriented and a lot of them are capable of being directly addressed without undue complication, for one thing.  Couples that are having sex and aren't married, can get married, assuming there's no impediment to that.  If they can't get married, there are things that can be followed up upon there, not all of which are easy to address, of course.  The most complicated one is couples that have married outside the Church where there is an impediment to marriage, such as one party being previously married and incapable of obtaining an annulment, but that's really the most difficult one.  Probably the last example is the only one in which people might routinely present themselves for a blessing, feeling themselves outside of things but wanting in.  I'm sure that does occur.  But that this has occured for a long time is well known.

And indeed, it is once again particularly European, oddly enough.  Divorce and remarriage are not unknown in the US, and there's been a lot of focus in the US Church for decades, I'd argue too much attention in fact, as it's given the illusion that it's a problem, but more or less just that.  It's more than that. But ecumenical practices in Europe have so blurred the lines that it's hard for couples in some regions, particularly in Northern Europe where the Lutheran and Catholic Churches are both common, to appreciate that these things matter.

At any rate, blessings of individuals occurring were already occurring, and therefore the development of this topic probably wasn't necessary.  The presumption that this was focused on homosexuality and licensing it, to a degree, was inevitable and unnecessary, even if the latter isn't the aim.

Indeed, on that, at least one Bishop in the US issued a letter that his parishioners would inevitably see it that way, so the blessing should not occur.  I guess the Vatican's statement in January overrides this.

Well, what about here?

I don't think it'll happen much.  I hope that people in these situations apply the entire topic correctly, and all are to be sympathized with, including the Priests that find themselves in the midst of it.

And there's one more thing.

The Bishop seems to indicate that those concerned about, and I'm saying concerned about not opposed, to, Fiducia Supplicans are acting with a sort of contempt, and based upon the reading of it, sort of a contempt either for this focus in the Latin Rite of the Church, or upon people who identify as homosexuals or transgendered.  Some people are, but some people are acting out of concern for the normalization of something that may very well reflect a cultural trend, rather than an organic existential reality.

And this gets back to this.  It's the Western World that's fascinated with homosexuality and which thinks transgenderism is a thing.  Homosexuality is not regarded in the same fashion as the West views it in most of the world, and indeed, as we've posted here before, in large sections of Asia it's regarded as a Western cultural thing, and there are a couple of aboriginal groups in African in which it's wholly unknown.  We don't know the origin of either category, but the categories themselves are fairly new.  Homosexuality, as we know to conceive of it, came about as a Western cultural category only within the last 150 years, and transgenderism only much more recently.  Given that most of the world's population isn't European, there's reason to doubt that recognizing these categories as bonafide ingrained traits is anything more than a passing trend, much like the European dominance of global culture itself.

And even in Europe, as opposed to the United States (which has a European culture) real doubt is now being cast on transgenderism.  The US is very behind the curve on this.

Given this, this focus may do something that isn't helpful, which is to focus.  While it is inaccurate, there's already a concept in much of non-Catholic American culture that the ranks of the Catholic religious are filled with homosexuals and even some Catholics remain convinced that there are pools of underground homosexuals in the same ranks, something that might actually have been somewhat true, but not nearly to the extent imagined, in the 70s and 80s.  Convincing orthodox Christians that the Catholic Church, which is generally a bastion of orthodoxy, isn't being influenced in this direction isn't helped by this focus.

And it will retard progress towards a reunion with the Orthodox, something that needs to happen but which we never quite get to. Already one Eastern European Orthodox Bishop who was getting very friendly with the Catholic Church as stated that Fiducia Supplicans will prevent a reunion.

Again, Bishop Biegler has not stated anything that isn't squarely orthodox in his letter.  But his focus on Bishop Hart demonstrated a looking back on an era which for most Wyoming Catholics didn't have much relevance to their current lives.  Fiducia Supplicans, while not saying anything revolutionary about doctrine either, can't help but focus on a topic which, in a greater sense, may not be relevant to much of the Universal Church, and which may actually reflect a passing concern of a passing culture to a degree.

Related threads:

What if the Western World is the "special case"?

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

Lex Anteinternet: The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, I...: 

The Annual Protestant Meatless Friday Freak Out, Inconveniently Moving Easter for Convenience, and Oliver Cromwell, fun sucker.

I started this post right at the start of Lent and then didn't finish it, and was going to trash it, but due to a late Lent event, I'm picking it back up.

The United States and Canada are Protestant nations. They don't really notice it as a rule, and quite a few cultural Protestants like to deny it, but if you are an adherent member of an Apostolic Christian religion, or for that matter probably if you are Jewish or Muslim, you'll definitely notice it.

One of the ways that it oddly comes up is the annual "it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that you can't eat fish on Fridays" discussion that Protestants in particular, and some very weakly evangelized lapsed Catholics, like to have.  It's ironic as some of the same people will insist that grape juice was served at The Last Supper (nope, definitely wine) or that the Bible says once you accept Jesus into your heart you can go back to sinning (nope, St. Paul in particular warns you can do that and still go to Hell).

Of course, it doesn't say that you must abstain from meat on Fridays.  It's a law of the Church, not biblically imposed. The Bible discusses fasting and gives lots of examples, and it left the office of Bishops to bind and loose.  This is a rule of the Church, which has been bound. 

It only applies to members of individual Churches.  I.e, Catholics are bound, not Lutherans, or members of make it up as you go Christian churches.  Moral laws bind everyone.  Church laws bind the members of the church.

Also, FWIW, fasting and abstention from meat go way back in Church history and used to be much stricter as a practice than it is now.  It's still much stricter in the Eastern churches.  In the East, fasting involves abstention from alcohol, eggs, dairy, fish, meat, and olive oil for the 40 days of Great Lent and Holy Week.  So the Orthodox, for example, are really down to a very bland menu at this point.

That group of people who like to claim that the Latin Rite practice was made up to support the fishing industry are really out to lunch on this one, particularly as the claim is based on a grossly misconstrued concept of what the food economy was like in the ancient world.  If you lived, for example, in a Sardinian fishing town in the Middle Ages, fish is what was for dinner every night.  The fishing industry didn't really need anyone's help to be economically viable.  And at one time the Latin Rite fast more closely resembled the Eastern one.  Claims like that are generally myths of the Reformation, created in jolly old England to justify carrying on with the Reformation when they couldn't come up with any actual good reasons to do so.

For most non-Catholics and non-Orthodox, however, this isn't in the forefront of people's minds.  Restaurants get it, as there are a lot of us, which is why fish based fare shows up this time of year darned near everywhere.  But rank and file Protestants, particularly of the Christmas/Easter variety, really don't ponder this much.  If you live in a state like Wyoming, that's really obvious, as we have very low religious observation here anyhow.  There are a lot of Catholics, but we're a minority.  Protestants who don't go to church often are no doubt the majority, followed by Protestants who go to the new "non-denominational" churches, which is to say the quasi Baptist, churches (there are no "non-denominational" churches).  They can't be expected to know Canon Law.

When you go to a function of any kind during Lent, this becomes pretty obvious.  "Here's your entrée". . will come the server, serving the beef sandwich between two slabs of beef served with beef fries.

Oh, well.

That you can't suspend this and just go to meatless on Saturday is something people don't grasp.  "You can skip it this time".  No, you can't.  Violation of the rule is a mortal sin.  That seems extreme to non-Catholics, and probably has for a long time, but by the same token we live in an era when a host of other mortal sins, the sexually and marital ones in particular, are ignored by even devout church going Protestants.  If you can convince yourself, getting married for the third or fourth time doesn't mean that you are an adulterer, you can pretty easily convince yourself that eating a hamburger on Fridays in Lent is okay this one time.  Indeed, in some odd ways, the logic isn't that much different.  They both involve appetites and excuses. 

This does make Catholics stick out, and the Orthodox even more, maybe.  In some ways, as the Catholic Church has suspended so many of these rules, the fact that there are some remaining makes Catholics stick out all the more and, in turn, the few remaining rules offend people all the more.  And that is in a way part of the point in the modern world.  It sets us apart, and it should.  Like those who appear with ashes on their forehead on Ash Wednesday, it's going to mark you.

This came to mind as when I got home last night, Long Suffering Spouse announced, "my mother proposed to have Easter Dinner this Friday. . ."

Eh?

Now, by way of an obvious point, we're clearly a "mixed" family.  My side of the family is all Catholic.  LSS's is all non-Catholic.

I don't know where the dinner suggestion stands right now, as LSS isn't saying, which means it must be in the air. She protested this as we have "town jobs" which means that a Friday gathering really isn't a viable option anyhow.  And one of the things about being married to a Catholic means is that the Catholicism will start to be picked up by the non-Catholic party, no matter what.

Beyond that, however, under the current rules for Latin Rite Catholics, (and I'm sure for Eastern Rite Christians as well) on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, the fasting rules allow Catholics to eat only one full meal and two smaller meals which, combined, would not equal a single normal meal.  We've already seen that the Eastern Rite is fasting by this point every day. Catholics may not eat meat on these two days, or on any Friday during Lent.

Now, I'm over 60 years old, which means the fasting rules no longer apply to me.  As it is, however, that's my normal daily routine anyhow.  I never eat big breakfasts or lunch.  I used to often skip both, but thanks to my thyroid medication, I'm hungrier than I used to be.  Be that as it may, I'm not comfortable with a feast on Good Friday. That's weird, from an Apostolic Christian prospective.  "This is the day our savior was murdered. . . let's just skip ahead to the day he was raised".  

You can't really do that.

Of course, in Cromwellian influenced Protestant America, you probably can.  He wouldn't, as he didn't approve of observing things anyhow, but he so messed stuff up it's never recovered in the English speaking, non-Catholic, world.  Another reason that they've had to hide his head.

Anyhow, I love my in-laws, who are great, but this is pretty much something I'm not going to be able to do.  I can't go to a big Easter dinner on Good Friday and do something like, "wow, that ham looks great. . . I'll just have the mashed potatoes. . . thanks".  The meatless rule still applies to me, and there's probably not going to be a giant cod for an "early" Easter dinner.

That would be weird.

Also weird is that on Good Friday, I have people trying to make appointments.  Most law offices are closed on Good Friday.  But most Americans work as Oliver Cromwell was a theologically deficient fun sucker and our Puritan heritage is ruining everything. Working to the grave is one thing that our Protestant founds in this country really gave to us, and it's one of the things that's really wrong with the culture.  Now, I usually do work, but I've long looked forward to most of the office being out, and only working a partial day.  And it gives me a chance to take Holy Saturday off.

I'm going to have to handle this today.  In prior years I think I would have just said yes, to somebody wanting in, or "the office is closed".  But instead I'm going to just say, the "office is closed for Good Friday".

I'll let the Puritans ponder it.

Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.

Lex Anteinternet: Holy Week.: 

Holy Week.

 This is Holy Week.  It commenced yesterday with Palm Sunday, which we noted  yesterday:

Palm Sunday

 

Zdzisław Jasiński Palm Sunday 1891.

From City Father:

Palm Sunday

In those countries which were spared the cultural impact of the Reformation, at least directly, at the entire week is one of celebration and observance.  In a lot of those places, people have the whole week off.  Some of Spanish and Central American friends, for example do.

Well, in the English-speaking world we've had to continue to endure the impact of Cromwell and all his fun sucking, so we'll be headed to work instead.

Lex Anteinternet: Palm Sunday

Lex Anteinternet: Palm Sunday:   

Palm Sunday

 

Zdzisław Jasiński Palm Sunday 1891.

From City Father:

Palm Sunday

Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day

Lex Anteinternet: St. Patrick's Day: 

St. Patrick's Day

A Celtic cross in a local cemetery, marking the grave of a very Irish, and Irish Catholic, figure.

Recently I ran this item: 

Lex Anteinternet: The Obituary: Mira qué bonita era by Julio Romero de Torres, 1895.  Depiction of a wake in Spain. I didn't have him as a teacher in high school, but I...

One of the things this oituary noted was:

"One more St. Patrick’s day craic for you, Dad."

That's nice, but what does that mean?

From Wikipedia:

Craic (/kræk/ KRAK) or crack is a term for news, gossip, fun, entertainment, and enjoyable conversation, particularly prominent in Ireland.It is often used with the definite article – the craic– as in the expression "What's the craic?" (meaning "How are you?" or "What's happening?"). The word has an unusual history; the Scots and English crack was borrowed into Irish as craic in the mid-20th century and the Irish spelling was then reborrowed into English. Under either spelling, the term has attracted popularity and significance in Ireland.

A relative who know the decedent well told me that in later years he really got into "being Irish" and had big St. Patrick's Day parties.

But is that Irish?

Not really.  That's hosting a party.

Granted, it's hosting a party in honor of the Saint, sort of. Or perhaps in honor of Ireland, sort of.  And there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever.  After all, "holidays" comes from "holy days", which were "feasts".   There are, by my recollection, some feast days even during Lent, and for that matter, it's often noted, but somewhat debated, that Sundays during Lent aren't technically part of it (although this post isn't on that topic, perhaps I'll address that elsewhere.

And St. Philip Neri tells us, moreover,  "Cheerfulness strengthens the heart and makes us persevere in a good life; wherefore the servant of God ought always to be in good spirits."

So, no problem, right?

Well, perhaps, as long as we're not missing the point.

The Irish everywhere honor this day, and some of that involves revelry.  Traditionally it was a day that events like Steeple Chases were conducted, sports being closely associated, actually, with religious holidays on the British Isles.  But the day is also often marked by the devout going to Mass, and as the recent Irish election shows, the Irish are more deeply Catholic than some recent pundits might suggest.

Perhaps it might be best, really, to compare the day to the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe in North America, which is widely observed by devout Catholics, and not only in Mexican American communities.

So, I guess, a purely bacchanalian event, which is so common in the US, doesn't really observe the holiday, but something else, and that risks dishonoring the day itself.  Beyond that, it's interesting how some in North America become particularly "Irish" on this day, when in fact the root of the day, and the person it honors, would import a different type of conduct entirely to some extent, if that was not appreciated.  Indeed, with many, St. Patrick would suggest confession and repentance.

Am I being too crabby?  

Probably, but we strive for authenticity in our lives and desire it.  That's so often at war with our own personal desires which often, quite frankly, aren't authentic.  Things aren't easy.

Lex Anteinternet: On duty and other things.

Lex Anteinternet: On duty and other things.: 

On duty and other things.

In principio antequam pondus officii.

More of the theme of the week. 

Now in regard to the matters about which you wrote: “It is a good thing for a man not to touch a woman,” but because of cases of immorality every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband.

The husband should fulfill his duty toward his wife, and likewise the wife toward her husband.

A wife does not have authority over her own body, but rather her husband, and similarly a husband does not have authority over his own body, but rather his wife.

Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, to be free for prayer, but then return to one another, so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control.

This I say by way of concession, however, not as a command.

Indeed, I wish everyone to be as I am, but each has a particular gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

Now to the unmarried and to widows, I say: it is a good thing for them to remain as they are, as I do, but if they cannot exercise self-control they should marry, for it is better to marry than to be on fire.

To the married, however, I give this instruction (not I, but the Lord): A wife should not separate from her husband—and if she does separate she must either remain single or become reconciled to her husband—and a husband should not divorce his wife.

To the rest I say (not the Lord): if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she is willing to go on living with him, he should not divorce her;and if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he is willing to go on living with her, she should not divorce her husband.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through the brother. Otherwise your children would be unclean, whereas in fact they are holy.

If the unbeliever separates, however, let him separate. The brother or sister is not bound in such cases; God has called you to peace.

For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband; or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

The Life That the Lord Has Assigned.

Only, everyone should live as the Lord has assigned, just as God called each one. I give this order in all the churches.

Was someone called after he had been circumcised? He should not try to undo his circumcision. Was an uncircumcised person called? He should not be circumcised. Circumcision means nothing, and uncircumcision means nothing; what matters is keeping God’s commandments. Everyone should remain in the state in which he was called.

Were you a slave when you were called? Do not be concerned but, even if you can gain your freedom, make the most of it. For the slave called in the Lord is a freed person in the Lord, just as the free person who has been called is a slave of Christ.g You have been purchased at a price. Do not become slaves to human beings.

Brothers, everyone should continue before God in the state in which he was called.

Advice to Virgins and Widows.

Now in regard to virgins, I have no commandment from the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

So this is what I think best because of the present distress: that it is a good thing for a person to remain as he is.

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek a separation. Are you free of a wife? Then do not look for a wife.

If you marry, however, you do not sin, nor does an unmarried woman sin if she marries; but such people will experience affliction in their earthly life, and I would like to spare you that.

I tell you, brothers, the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not having them, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, those buying as not owning, those using the world as not using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away.

I should like you to be free of anxieties. An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord.

But a married man is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. An unmarried woman or a virgin is anxious about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in both body and spirit. A married woman, on the other hand, is anxious about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

I am telling you this for your own benefit, not to impose a restraint upon you, but for the sake of propriety and adherence to the Lord without distraction.

If anyone thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, and if a critical moment has come and so it has to be, let him do as he wishes. He is committing no sin; let them get married.

The one who stands firm in his resolve, however, who is not under compulsion but has power over his own will, and has made up his mind to keep his virgin, will be doing well.

So then, the one who marries his virgin does well; the one who does not marry her will do better.

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whomever she wishes, provided that it be in the Lord.n

She is more blessed, though, in my opinion, if she remains as she is, and I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

St. Paul to the Corinthians.

Sub finem, cum spe cessat officium.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, March 7, 1274. Death of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Lex Anteinternet: Wednesday, March 7, 1274. Death of St. Thomas Aqui...:  

Wednesday, March 7, 1274. Death of St. Thomas Aquinas.

 

Thomas Aquinus died on this day in 1274.  He was a proponent of the major Catholic school of thought, natural theology, and the father of a school of thought known as Thomism after him.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Getting "On With It"

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: Getting "On With It": 

Blog Mirror: Getting "On With It"

From the excellent blog City Father.

Getting "On With It"

We've had a variety of posts sort of ballpark on this topic, more or less, recently.  Most of them have come up in the context of comparing "then and now", one of the purposes of this blog

This entry is so well done, I really can't riff off of it much.  What Fr. Franco states is so well stated, that I should just leave it alone, so I'll mostly do so.

To the extent I won't, it should be noted I guess that things in the Western World are so existentially screwed up right now, it's frightening, and it's expressing itself in corrupted ways in our culture and our politics, which are an expression of our culture, so much that it threatens to destroy it, and perhaps even us.  A certain getting back to the basics, or roots, seems to me to very much what is needed to be done, which one party in this contest seeks to do, but doesn't understand how to do it, or what the existential truths are, and the other seeks to eliminate it and create a bold new world which it won't succeed in doing.

I was unaware of the Rituale Romanum's "Exhortation before Marriage discussed in this text.  I wish that hadn't been removed, and I wish it would return.

Lex Anteinternet: "We are weary".

Lex Anteinternet: "We are weary".: 

"We are weary".

That's a line from Crisis magazine's editor, Eric Sammons, about the Papacy of Pope Francis.

I’m not going to carve sections out of the article, as I will sometimes do, as I try to be constantly conscious of the fact that he is the Pope and deserves respect. Additionally, as Pope Francis tends to be vague, which I think is his nature, not intentional, as Sammons and others like to claim (and in the professional world I've known professionals who were absolute geniuses, but whose instructions were completely impossible to understand) I don't want to be in the position of criticizing something that's magisterial, when I think it isn't.  Indeed, Ed Conte, the Canon Lawyer, regularly puts out statements on his blog, which is linked in here, that people making some specific criticism have fallen into heresy in regard to this item:

What if the Western World is the "special case"?

And it comes in the wake of The Synod on Synodality, which "progressives" in the Church have celebrated but which has been fatiguing in the extreme on the orthodox.  

And given this, Sammons is correct in at least that statement.  Many of us are weary.

Sammons is also correct that to a certain extent many are marking time, that being the old military term for marching in place.  Pope Francis is now quite elderly and there's a sense that we're worn out and waiting for the changing of the guard. This isn't the same at all as wishing somebody dead, which would be gravely sinful, but rather just knowing that we're at the end of things in this Papacy, probably.  The next one is around the corner, one way or another, probably.  Pope Francis is 87 years old.  At 87, as a man, you could pass any day.  Of course, it's not completely impossible by any means that he'll be the Pope for another decade, and perhaps, although it's unlikely, another two.

I think this is true, FWIW, of politics as well.  People have fatigued in a major way of Donald Trump, whom I'm not comparing to Pope Francis, and of Joseph Biden, whom I'm also not comparing to Pope Francis, and are marking time.  As with all of these individuals, there are the ardent supporters and the ardent opponents, whom are not tired, and they are the ones who do most of the talking.  As Sammons notes, however, there are now a lot of people who sort of shrug their shoulders and simply go on. They aren't ignoring things per se, they're simply too weary to react much.

Whether you'd be inclined to react much or not depends on how religious you are, in regard to the Pope, or how political you are, in terms of American politics.

Some, on both sides of the Papacy, react quite a bit.  Most people trudge on. As St. Paul notes, married men have the concerns of the day for their families, and women do as well.  Being assailed by the constant winds of religious storms adds to their burdens, and they close the windows and doors, or mostly do.  Probably a lot frankly did when they received a handout on the Synod on Synodality and saw its childish artwork and cartoon sans serif font.  "Oh great, more 1970s stuff".

The devout, including clerics like on Catholic Stuff You Should Know, will complain that Americans pay more attention to football than religion.  Lots of people note that most Catholics just ignored the Synod process and didn't participate.  Some assert that participation came more from the Catholic left than any other. And indeed, all this is probably true. But fatigue is an element of it.  At the time of the Synod, we were already years into the Francis Papacy and occasionally distressing quotes. The German Church was years into its march into heresy, and nothing was stopping it.  We were right out of COVID 19 when the doors of the churches had been closed.  And now somebody wants us to participate in a Snyodal process?

Most people are just going to ignore that.  Those who don't, are the already fanatically devoted, perhaps temporarily in the case of those without the burdens of making a living and providing for a family.  Some are the tirelessly devout, who are to be admired.  Some of the tirelessly devout, on the other hand, who already were suspicious of Pope Francis, turned their back on him.

And the same with American politics.  People are endlessly weary of Donald Trump and his extremism, and of the extremism of the American left, and have had enough.  For that reason, the current polls, which we already know most people will not participate in, may not mean very much.  The primaries are marching on, and a lot of American voters may simply skip them.  In the end, Biden may stand a better chance than things currently reflect, simply because people detest him less than Trump.

There probably are lessons to be gleaned from all of this, but they're hard to pick up from the inside.  If you are the person leading the charge, looking back to see who has dropped out of it, or never joined it, probably isn't something that you do much.  Those right around you, at the head of the charge, obscure your vision anyhow.  

And, particularly for the elderly, effecting change takes on a sense of impending mortal limitation.  If you don't get your work done, it might never get done.  For Trump and the MAGA, if he isn't reinstalled as President, his movement will fall apart and his goals, whatever they are imagined to be, will fracture into pieces, some irreparably broken. For Pope Francis, if he's attempting to steer the Church in certain directions, and it certainly seems to some extent, with the Synod, he is as to how the Church is structured, if he passes before his hoped for changes are complete, the next Pope may see that they are not in the form which he hoped for.  Pope's after all, are monarchs.

In an odd way, however, there's some comfort for the weary in all of this, particularly for Catholics.  The Pope many feared would make radical changes really has not, and his most controversial act does not change any doctrine. While it does explore things theologically, it does so on the topic of blessings (and is hard to understand for a layman).  Its issuance has made the rise of the African Church manifestly apparent, and that the future lies in that direction, and towards orthodoxy, pretty clear.  Catholics can rest in that the Catholic belief that the Holy Spirit will not allow the Church to fall into error has not been tested and found wanting.

Politically, we have yet to see how things will resolve.  It's scary out there, to be sure.  But perhaps the weariness disguises disgust at a system that's been increasingly failing since the 1980s and needs to be fixed.  Perhaps that will happen as well.

Lex Anteinternet: What if the Western World is the "special case"?

Lex Anteinternet: What if the Western World is the "special case"?: 

What if the Western World is the "special case"?

Pastoral scene, pre Soviet Ukrainian village.  Not a lot of homsexuality, transgenderism, etc. going on there.

Those who protest vehemently belong to small ideological groups," Francis told Italian newspaper La Stampa. "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it".

"But in general, I trust that gradually everyone will be reassured by the spirit of the 'Fiducia Supplicans' declaration by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: it aims to include, not divide," the pope said.

We all see things through thick lenses of our cultures, and the history of our cultures.  This was true even of the authors of the Gospels, which sometimes come through on certain items in their writings. 

I think Fiducia Supplicans demonstrates this.

For that matter, to use a bad secular example, I think Justice Kennedy's opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges did as well, which is not to say that the documents are analagous. They are not.

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy seems to have generally believed that the Obergefell decision overturning tens of thousands of years of understanding on the nature of marriage would be met with rapid universal acceptance, rather than turning out to be the metaphorical shot heard around the world that gave us Donald Trump in short order.¹

The Supreme Court, in Obergefells, and the Papacy, in Fiducia Supplicans, are reacting to the same development seem to have made the assumption of thinking that what happens in European cultures is what happens, or what even really is of major concern, all over the world.  That just isn't the case in this instance.

A pretty good case can be made that "homosexuality", as Western Society regards it, doesn't even exist, although certainly same sex attraction and sexual conduct does. They are not the same thing.  Therefore, when the Pope says "A special case are Africans: for them homosexuality is something 'bad' from a cultural point of view, they don't tolerate it" it might in fact be the case that the opposite is true.  That is, the "special case" is Western Europeans, for whom homosexuality exists, and is not a "something 'bad'", or at least a significant number of Western Europeans, of which North and South Americans are (once again) part, have now been schooled or accepted that it isn't bad.

In most, of the world, homosexuality is regarded as a European thing.  Again, the conduct occurs, but not the gender characterization.  And in no society, does it occur with the frequency it does in Western Society, which is also the society which as become the most libertine, albeit only in the last seventy years, particularly in regard to sex and manifestations of sex, including outward manifestations of sex.

We've dealt with that before, but now that It's come back up in this fashion, it's worth looking at again.  Pretty much everywhere this conduct occurs, it's strongly associated with a variety of factors, one of which, in its broad manifestation we now see, is a wealthy society that has lots of idle time.  Put another way, it's a factor of resources and availability to them.

This is true of a lot of human disorders that are closely related to elemental needs and what we tend to universally see is that when we have a society that is heavily deprived of an elemental needs, a disordered desire for it, combined with disorder conduct, pops up in a minority (never a majority) of the population.

Food is a good example.

Scarcity of food will result in a massively strong desire to eat.  In some people, that leads to desperate acts under desperate situations.  Cannibalism, for example, comes to mind in regard to the Donner Party, or the residents of Leningrad.  People took measures they normally wouldn't.

Not everyone did, however.

At least in the Soviet examples, which repeated in various fashions from 1917 through early 1944, most people didn't.  People would starve instead.

Conversely, in food situations where there's a surplus of food, the entire population will tend to gain weight, but not everyone tends to become excessively overweight.  Modern dieticians will yell in horror at this, but overweight, and truly grossly obese are not the same things.  Grossly obese happens for a number of reasons, including people having a makeup which is extremely efficient in order to avoid famine, but it's only in an unnatural situation of surplus calories that it manifest itself.  

As a scene in Sam Peckinpah's Major Dundee presents it:

Sergeant Chillum:  Don't look to me like them gut-eaters has been feeding them very good.

Wiley: Did you ever see a fat Apache?

Sergeant Chillum: I ain't yet.

This scene depicts the pick up cavalry formation taking the kidnapped children and feeding them, but the point raised, accidentally, is a good one.  Native Americans lived in a state of nature, and in that state, they were in good shape and not packing around extra weight.  No culture in a state of nature does.

When things become disordered, such as in famine, some people will do something that can be argued to be disordered, eat other people.  When there's too much food and no real need to work too hard, physically, to obtain calories, everyone puts on weight, but some will very much to their detriment.

So what's this have to do with homosexuality, let alone Fiducia Supplicans? Well, quite a lot, really.

Just as, in a balanced state of nature, or close to one, people don't get fat, and don't turn to cannibalism, in a balanced state of nature, they don't turn to the range of sexual deviations that they do in an unbalanced one.

Edgar Paxon's Custer's Last Stand.  While it might seem odd to see this posted here, the Cheyenne and Sioux warriors who won this battle, and one just days before it at Rosebud, were never more than a day's ride from their families.  Women were of course present in the Native camp at Little Big Horn, as the battle was brought on by the 7th Cavalry's attack on the village, but at least one native woman had been present at Rosebud as well.  Native raiding parties might separate from their families for a period of days, but not months.

In a state of nature, people live in pretty small communities and there's pretty much a 1 to 1 sex ratio.  Men would only be separated from women for very brief periods of time.  A war party, for example, might separate for several days, but not months. The Great Raid of 1840, for example, which is regarded as the largest Native American raid every conducted, just lasted two days.  Add in travel, and the warrior bands were gone longer, but it probably wasn't much more than a week, if that long.

Hunting parties are also often cited for periods of separation, but in a healthy native state, the separation was often just a matter of hours.  Women were usually close enough to a really large hunting party that they could partake in the processing of the game.  There were undoubtedly exceptions, but by and large, this was the rule.

Taking the war example again, consider this from Ethiopia's mobilization order of 1935 when Italy invaded:

Everyone will now be mobilized, and all boys old enough to carry a spear will be sent to Addis Ababa. Married men will take their wives to carry food and cook. Those without wives will take any woman without a husband. Anyone found at home after the receipt of this order will be hanged.

Emperor Haile Selassie

Married men, take your wives.  Not married?  Find a woman who isn't married and taker her.

It's only once you begin to mess with the basic human living patters that the opposite is true.  Industrialization, which we'll get to in a moment, really brought in a major disruption from the normal living patter, but there are preindustrial examples that are notable.  War provides a pretty good example again.

Major military campaigns in antiquity relied on theft of food, which is not ordered, and which is well known.  If the fighters were separated from women, they also rapidly descended to disorder.  Early military campaigns (and some recent ones) are famously associated with "rape and pillage", and by men who would not ordinarily do that.  

Another example of adjusting to desperate times might be taken in Muhammed authoring his troops, who were ready to go home as they were tired of being without their wives, to have sex with their female saves taken in war.  This is widely denied by Muslim scholars today, but it seems to be fairly well established and in fact the practice has been resumed by Islamic fundamentalist armed bands and its the origin of Muslim sex slave trading, which is an historical fact. That this is basically an example of licensed rape can't really be denied.

Conversely, in Christian societies the "marital debt" was taken very seriously up until recently, and it was taken so seriously in the Middle Ages that a wife of a man who wished to go on crusade could veto it simply by citing the marital debt.  That's fairly extraordinary, but telling, in that she could simply declare that if her husband departed her needs in this category might cause her to fall into sin, and therefore, he couldn't go.  Moderns like to look down on such things today, but in reality that was a very natural and realistic view of human sexuality.

Same gender attractions play in here too, but within bands of men kept away from women for long periods of time.  The most famous example of that may be the Spartans, who were fierce warriors trained from young adulthood, in the case of men, to be soldiers.  However, the warehousing of men, and boys, away from women brought about widespread homosexual conduct as the living conditions were, rather obviously, completely abnormal.

So too are much of our current living patters.

Industrialization separated men from women and parent from child in a major way, recreating the abnormality of living conditions noted above on a society wide level.

And that's deeply unnatural.

It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution that men left their homes every day, working long hours, and were separated from their wives and children for what amounts to well over half of their adult waking hours.  And this was not only true of industrial laborers, but also of their white collar bosses.  In many industrial societies, moreover, this was amplified by the fact that men further segregated themselves, or were segregated by society, even on off hours.

It was essayist Henry Fairlie who noted:

Work still gives meaning to rural life, the family and churches.  But in the city today, work and home, family and church, are seperated.  What the office workers do for a living is not part of thier home life.  AT the same time they maintain the pointless frenzy of hteir work hours on thier off hours.  They rush form the office to jog, to the gym or the YMCA pool to work at their play with the same joylessness.

Fairlie wrote this in 1986, well after the most aggressors conditions of the Industrial Revolution had slackened, but he did note in The Idiocy of Urban Life what that had been like.  Men left early in the morning and walked, on average, seven miles to work. They worked their all day, and then returned home after twelve hours of labor.  Well over half their day had been spent away from their family.

By the 20th Century that had, in many heavily industrial regions, created a new pattern of living he didn't address, and one which lasted well into the 1970s.  Men left for work in blue collar jobs, worked all day with other men, and at quitting time, they hit the bars.  Men in the American Rust Belt, for instance, commonly hit a bar every night on the way home, spending a couple of hours drinking beer in an all male company, save for the barmaids whose tips went up as the beer flowed.  Rough and tumble places, these were not the equivalent of charming English or Irish pubs of the same period.  The maleness, if you will, of their work was all the more amplified by the nearly universal membership of men in organizations that excluded women.

Not surprisingly, this all encouraged conventional sexual vice.  Some men, a minority but nonetheless an appreciable nature, took the jousting with bar maid and waitresses further, with some of the women reciprocating.  When Hank Thompson and Kitty Wells sang about the "wild side of life" it's easy to wonder why they were hanging out in bars, not really appreciating that a lot of men in particular simply did.  Indeed, the term "family man", conversely, had real meaning.

Not to dump this exclusively on blue collar workers by any means, philandering conduct was common in the white collar world as well, to such an extent that it became instantly recognizable to people who went to see 1960's The Apartment, the entire theme of which plays out through the vehicle of cheating married executives using their younger colleagues' apartment.

Indeed, when I was young, I can recall my parents openly talking about professionals in town who had affairs and mistresses.  This certainly didn't include anyone in my family, which was 100% Catholic and meant it.  That conduct was clearly not approved of, but my point is that it occured.  While never discussed in this fashion, in the context of what we're discussing here, the mistresses were sometimes targets of opportunity, so to speak.  Secretaries and assistants.  Indeed, I heard a lawyer of the generation prior to mine, once relate of the generation of lawyers two generations older than hers, that quite a few of the paralegals of that old, now largely dead or very old, were effectively mistresses.  One such assistant had mysteriously had a child out of wedlock when that was pretty rare, and it was widely known who teh employer father was.

There's a lot more that could be explored here, but the point is that the contra natural working conditions give rise to departures from morality and nature.  Even now, or particularly now, you'll hear a close female colleague of a male be referred to as his "work wife".  I've even heard a person refer to herself that way.  Work wives have no marital debt, but hidden by the statement is the vague suggestion or fear that they might be providing such a service, illicit thought it would be.

Homosexuality, in large part, comes about, I strongly suspect, due to something similar.

In an earlier thread, we noted that there are in fact cultures that not only have low incidents of homosexual conduct, but none.  As we earlier posted:

Somewhat related to this, interestingly enough, I also came upon an article by accident on the Aka and Ngandu people of central Africa, who are branches of the Bushmen, or what some people still call "pygmies".  They've been remarkably resilient in staying close to nature.

A hunter-gatherer people, they naturally fascinate Western urbanites, and have been studied for many years by Barry and Bonnie Hewlett, a husband and wife anthropologist team.  Starting off with something else, after a period of time the Washington State University pair "decided to systematically study sexual behavior after several campfire discussions with married middle-aged Aka men who mentioned in passing that they had sex three or four times during the night. At first [they] thought it was just men telling their stories, but we talked to women, and they verified the men's assertions."

The study revealed some interesting things, besides that, which included that they regarded such interaction as a species of work, designed for procreation.  Perhaps more surprising to our genital focused society, they had no concept of homosexuality at all, no practice of that at all, and additional had no practice or concept of, um. . . well . . .self gratification.  You'll have to read between the lines on that one.

Perhaps the Synod on Synodality ought to take note of the reality of the monotheist Aka's and Ngandu's as that's exactly what the Catholic faith has always taught.¹ And so it turns out in a society that's actually focused that way, what Catholics theology traditionally has termed disordered, just doesn't occur.  It's also worth noting that the rise of homosexuality really comes about after men were dragged out of the household's on a daily basis by social and economic causes, and the rise of . . . um., well, anyhow, recently is heavily tied to the pornificaiton of the culture that was launched circa 1953.

In other words, those like Fr. James Martin who seek a broader acceptane of of sexual disorder, might actually be urging the acceptance of a byproduct of our overall economic and social disorder, which itself should be fixed.

But what would be the conditions that bring it about in our culture?

We're not even supposed to ask that now, but for most people who have same sex attraction, it's a pretty heavy cross to bear.  We should be looking at how it comes about.

Well, what we know is that if we separate men from women, particularly in their formative years, we'll get it at a higher rate than when that doesn't occur.

Going back to war, that fountain of all problematic things, we can look back as far as the Spartans to find this.  Spartans, faced with a constant threat of war, took up separating men from women large-scale and raising boys in barracks.  It also had a notable degree of homosexual conduct.

Hmmm. . . separate young men and keep them separates just as things begin, for lack of a better way to put it, turn on, and . . . .

The Spartans were a notable early example of this, which in turn tends to be exaggerated.  It's not likely that every single Spartan male was a homosexual.  It's also not the case, as is sometimes suggested, that Ancient Greece was wildly homosexual.  Indeed, Plato abhorred it and regarded it as contrary to nature and proposed the Athenian assembly ban homosexual acts, masturbation, and illegitimate sex in general.

Going forward in time, when we really start to see references to the acts (but not a claimed "homosexual" status) comes with the first semi modern navies.  It was a constant concern, for instance, of the Royal Navy, which perhaps might be regarded as the first modern navy.  A great navy, it was not necessarily recruited in the most charming way and many sailors were simply press-ganged, a type of conscription, into it against their will.  As press gangs favored hitting bars in ports, many of the men conscripted into the Royal Navy already lacked a strong attachment to home and family, and ports were notoriously associated with prostitution.  Anyhow, a lot of men away from sea for months, or years, at a time, and a lot of them being fairly young. . . well the problem rose again.

It replicated itself in large modern armies as well, interestingly often among the officer class.  In European armies where the officer class was made up of minor nobility as a rule, the men in it had entered as the only other real employment option, if they were not set to inherit the estate, was the clergy.  In some European armies officers were strongly discouraged from marrying, which in part reflected the fact that their pay was very bad, as their countries knew that they could rely on family money. While it didn't occur universally in every such army, in some, such as the pre World War One German Army, there was a strong streak of hidden homosexuality.

English private schools, which were widely used by the upper class, were notorious for homosexuality for the same reason.  Homosexual conduct became so common in them that homosexuality used to be referred to elsewhere as "the English Disease".  Private schools were segregated effectively by class, and very much by gender.  Unlike the charming portrayal in the Harry Potter series of works, boys went to boys schools and girls to girls school.  Quite often, over time, parents enrolled their children in the same schools they'd gone to.  Overtime, a closeted institutional homosexuality, or at least its common occurrence, crept in.

It could be legitimately asked how on earth any of this relates to our current era, but it does in more ways than we might imagine.

In most Western societies today, we make no effort, for the most part, to separate men and women in anything, formally.  But as we've already detailed, we do send men, and now women, out of their families and into an unnatural environment on a daily basis.  People often meet their future spouses in periods of time when young people are constantly together, such as in school or university, but as soon as they are established, we pull them apart.

Starting during World War Two, moreover, a false academia combined with the corruption and destruction of the war, gave rise to the Sexual Revolution.  We commonly think of that as arriving in the 60s, but in reality it probably really started in the 1940s with the publication of Kinsey's false academic narratives. That was the first shot, so to speak, and the publication of Playboy the second one.  While Playboy was opposed in some localities into the 1980s, by the 1950s it was so well established, in spite of completely rejecting conventional morality, and in spite, moreover, of publishing photos of women younger than 18, that the ground had been massively lost.  The pill followed in the early 60s, work patterns changed due to the introduction of domestic machinery, and sexual morality took a beating.  Once its natural purpose was obscured, and then lost, which really basically took all the way into the 1990s, the widespread acceptance of homosexual sex was inevitable.

None of which means that a large number of people will take it up.

But what does mean, that some people, in some circumstances, will. And the unnatural conditions that we live in, amplified by societal moorings having been cut by the Sexual Revolution, help bring that about.  And as society has chosen to simply embrace everything that deviates from the norm, and natural, as it applies to ourselves, those afflicted have almost no place to go, but deeper in, no matter how destructive that may be.

All of which is a good reason that people in this circumstance need blessings, if blessing are properly understood.

And which would, therefore, support Fiducia Supplicans.

But none of which suggests that the Church's view on sex is what is causing a decline in attendance in  Europe, and that a wider acceptance of homosexuality as normal, as some would urge, would actually do anything.  This all is a problem in the West, to be sure, but the underlying evolution of thought that some have, that this is all natural, is not supported by the evidence.

The evidence supports the contrary.

Which gets us back to our original point.  African and Asia, for all of their problems, have lived closer to nature, longer, than we have.  But that is rapidly changing, and in much of Asia in particular it already has. People who like to imagine that there is such a thing as broad progress, for which there is no good evidence, would argue that this is all progress, so that everything we have noted as a byproduct of the evolution of industry in the West will necessarily happen everywhere else. But that's not necessarily the case at all.

And indeed, in the West itself there seem to be an awakening of tradition, and a desire to return to a more rooted lifestyle.  Ironically, evolutions in technology may bring that about.  We know that populations are declining everywhere in the Western Northern Hemisphere, which is seen as a disaster but which in fact may emphasize this sort of return to the village.

Footnotes:

1.  Obergefell is an incredibly weak decision which, if it were to reappear in front of the United States Supreme Court today, would be reversed.  My prediction is that it will be within the next decade as it devoid of solid legal reasoning.

When it was handed down, it was my prediction here that it would cause massive social disruption and resistance, which in fact it has.  Pollsters like to point out that the views on same gender unions have moved greatly since it was handed down, which is true, but what they seem to miss is that it was basically the last straw on the part of traditional social conservatives, as well as (Southern type) populists on forced social change.  The latter group had long ago accommodated itself to divorce, to people shacking up, and begrudgingly to homosexual conduct but it wasn't about to be told that homosexual unions equated with marriage.  In very real terms, Anthony Kennedy, whether he realizes it or not, has always been Donald Trump's running mate.

Related Threads:

The Overly Long Thread. Gender Trends of the Past Century, Definitions, Society, Law, Culture and Their Odd Trends and Impacts.