Treat Me Like a Minority, Please

Ok, someone explain this to me. Religion is one of the most touchy and better-to-be-avoided subjects in the modern world, and especially in the workplace. Politics is probably right behind.

Employers have all kinds of restrictions in this area. You can't ask a potential employee what religion he professes, and if the subject comes up at work in the lunchroom, someone could potentially get sued for discrimination or harrassment.

Same goes for ethnicity.

You use an ethnic slur or comment on an ethnic stereotype in the workplace, and baby, you're in big trouble.

So why is it that I have to sit here and listen to people curse and blaspheme?

For example, recently the guy in the cube across from me managed to use the Holy Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, invoke a curse of damnation in the Divine Name of God, and mention the excrement which emanates from a bull's nether-regions, all in the same foul sentence.

Now, I don't appreciate coarse language of any kind, but I especially cannot tolerate blasphemies against God and His Son. That is most offensive to me.

But do you think this same man would dare utter the word "nigger" if I were a "person of color," sitting across from him?

I'm pondering what to do. I should probably say something to the guy.

Meanwhile, a bit of reparation:

May the most holy, most sacred,
most adorable, most incomprehensible
and ineffable Name of God be forever
praised, blessed, loved, adored and
glorified in Heaven, on earth, and
under the earth, by all the creatures
of God, and by the Sacred Heart of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Most
Holy Sacrament of the Altar. Amen.

My only hope is that white male Traditional Catholics will soon become the minority, and then begin to receive the same kind of consideration and sensitive treatment that other minority groups get.

What I Said on My 24th Post

1. Go into your journal's archives.
2. Find your 24th post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

"He who believes in me, as the scripture says: Out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water." Problem is, there is no Old Testament Scripture that says living water will flow from the heart of the believer.

That was from a post called "Water on the Right Side," looking at John 7:38.

A Brief History of Contraception

Contraceptive devices have been around for a long, long time, and contraceptive acts have been around for even longer.

When I distinguish the device from the act, I mean to distinguish some kind of physical object - pills, herbs, potions, latex, etc. - from a distinctively contraceptive act that is performed without the aid of a device - Sodomy, Onanism, etc.

As for contraceptive acts, the first one on the biblical record is in Genesis 38. Onan, son of Judah, was the perpetrator, and for his sin he was slain by God. I have not yet been able to find even one single commentary on Genesis 38 - Protestant or Catholic - that denies that Onan's sin was anything but a contraceptive act, a sin against the natural law, a "pollution" of himself, and an act entirely worthy of death.

The current trend among contracepting bible scholars, pastors, teachers, professors, etc., is to interpret Onan's sin as a sin of selfishness. The text says he refused to raise up children by his brother's widow because he knew the child would not be legally considered his own - hence, he was selfish.

Given that I have been arguing for a common link between contraception and Sodomy, I must point out that there is an eerily similar argument that is currently en vogue amongst the Enlightened of our century with regard to Sodom and Gomorrah. 'Twas inhospitality, and not Sodomy, that earned them a stiff dose of fire and brimstone.

Ironic, isn't it? Both events are as old as Genesis, and so ancient, universal, and uninterrupted is the traditional interpretation of these events, that the names of the sins which were punished are actually taken from the stories themselves. Onan was slain for Onanism; Sodom was burned for Sodomy.

But the scholars of the 20th-21st century would have us believe that "Onanism" is the sin of selfishness, and that "Sodomy" is the sin of inhospitality. In both cases, what Scripture depicts as an "abomination" in God's sight is reduced to a mere injustice against Social Charity.

The use of contraceptive devices is very ancient, and some 1st-2nd century medical documents actually differentiate between abortifacients and mere contraceptives (c.f. Soranus of Ephesus, Gynaecology, 98-138 AD).

The OXford Classical Dictionary mentions that "sponges soaked in vinegar or oil, or cedar resin applied to the mouth of the womb" were used as barrier contraceptives, while "pomegranate skin, pennyroyal, willow, and the squirting cucumber" were "taken orally or used as pessaries."

Soranos spoke of wool suppositories, olive oil, honey, cedar resin, alum, balsam gum, and white lead as barriers. Later writers (Paul of Aegina and Dioskorides) published recipes for herbal-based oral contraceptives. Another common practice, attested to by Aetios of Amida, mentions sorcery, magic, and superstitious acts such as wearing amulets.

This latter practice, involving the use of magic and potions, may well be what St. Paul had in mind when he condemned those who practice "sorcery" (Gal. 5:20), and what St. John had in mind when he wrote of those "did they repent of their murders or their sorceries." (Rev. 9:21) In both cases, the Greek word is pharmakeia, from whence we derive our English words "pharmacy" and "pharmaceuticals." That is to say, the root word is closer to "drug" or "potion" than it is to the idea of spell books and black cats.

For the more Dedicated to Sterility, there was the option of male castration, a truly barbaric procedure that has been sanitized and made respectable in our day under the title "Vasectomy." It will ever be a testament to the 20th century's violation of the English language that the medical community could market a procedure, the sole purpose of which is to make a well-functioning reproductive organ definitively non-functional, which would then be widely known as "getting fixed."

The purpose of all of this is, of course, simpy to familiarize the reader with the fact that contraception is no new invention. Recent decades may have produced more refined and effective methods, but it must be understood by the reader that the early Christians who everywhere condemned the practice of contraception were condemning the mindset, not the lack of sophistication in the popular methods. It is not as if a St. Clement of Alexandria would have gladly embraced wide-spread contraception if only he were a contemporary of Trojan, Inc.

Let me bolster the opinion with some factual data. St. Clement of Alexandria writes (190 AD) that the male seed has a specific purpose: "Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly spilled, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted." (The Instructor of Children, 2:10:91:2)

Note that he is not concerned with the method employed, whether it be a potion, a barrier, Onanism, etc., but rather with the fact that the seed is being "wasted," when it has been instituted by God for a specific purpose.

In the same work, he again appeals to the natural law as it has been instituted by God: "To engage in coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature."

Lactantius writes (307 AD) in the same way, appealing teleologically to the intrinsic purpose of the reproductive organs: "God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the generating part of the body [genitalem corporis partem], as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring." (Divine Institutes, Book VI, 23)

As if writing against the common wisdom of our age, which says the the number of children to be had should be dictated by finances, the same Lactantius writes that some "complain of the scantiness of their income, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children; as though, in truth, their income were in the power of those who possess it, or [as if] God did not daily make the rich poor, and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from [sexual] congress [ab uxoris congressione] than with wicked hands to mar the work of God." (ibid., Book VI, 20)

In the late 4th century, St. Ephiphanius condemned those who "exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children," because they had distorted the purpose of the act: "Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption,: (Panarion, 26:5:2)

St. John Chrysostom likewise wrote of the sin of coveteousness, and warned that this material greed led men to "esteem grievous and unwelcome" the very thing "which is sweet, and universally desirable: the having of children." He noted two distinct sins that grew out of this coveting, namely, "killing the newborn," and "even acting to prevent their beginning to live." (Homilies on Matthew, 28:5)

Elsewhere, this same saint wrote of the existence of "medicines of sterility," and also "murder before birth" (abortion). His words testify to the fact that contraception was something associated, not with married couples, but with prostitutes. He expresses his own bewilderment at the situation, saying "it is something worse than murder ... I do not know what to call it; for [the harlot] does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation." Doubly damnable, however, was the married man who inflicted this contraception on his wife, "for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife." (Homilies on Romans, 24)

Turning to the 4th and early 5th centuries, we are faced with the witness of two of the Western Church's greatest minds, St. Jerome and St. Augustine.

St. Jerome, in his letter Against Jovinian, testifies again to the Christian understanding of the natural law: "Does [Jovinian] imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?" (1, 19)

In a letter to Eustochium, the saint recounts that "some [women] go so far as to take potions, that they may insure barrenness, and thus murder human beings almost before their conception." That he is not speaking of abortion here is proved by his next words, which make the distinction: "Some, when they find themselves with child through their sin, use drugs to procure abortion, and when (as often happens) they die with their offspring, they enter the lower world laden with the guilt not only of adultery against Christ but also of suicide and child murder." (Letter XXII, 13)

St. Augustine testifies to the purpose of marriage, writing against the Manicheans' "doctrine that the production of children is an evil." He writes that when "the production of children, which is the proper end of marriage," is renounced, husbands "are led to commit adultery even in marriage." His argument seems to be based on the association of contraceptives with the practice of prostitution. That is, when the central sacred character and purpose of marriage - begetting children - is removed from marriage, the marriage itself suffers an essential change in substance, having been demoted from a sacred union to mere prostitution. He rebukes the Manicheans for this desecration, saying "thou seekest to destroy the purpose of marriage. Thy doctrine turns marriage into an adulterous connection, and the bed-chamber into a brothel." (Reply to Faustus the Manichaean, Book XV, 7)

In another writing on the subject of marriage, St. Augustine makes the same points. He speaks of couples who come together in instances where "propagation of offspring is not the motive of the intercourse" - which he calls a minor sin - but where "there is still no attempt to prevent such propagation, either by wrong desire or evil appliance." Those who have recourse to such desires (some translations render it "prayer," which seems to indicate more than just a latent desire and more of an active plea) or "appliances," says the saint, "although called by the name of spouses, are really not such; they retain no vestige of true matrimony." This "cruel lust," he writes, "resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth." In such situations, he concludes, "I boldly declare either that the woman is, so to say, the husband's harlot; or the man the wife's adulterer." (On Marriage and Concupiscence, Book I, Chapter XVII [XV])

So what does all of this mean?

It proves that contraception and a contraceptive mentality have been around, in many various forms, since the earliest days of Man's existence. It is not a novelty of the 20th century, but rather, the novelty of the 20th century is that "bible-believing Christians" - for the first time in history - began to defend this activity as a positive virtue.

The situation has become so bad in our Christian society that pastors no longer counsel engaged couples to avoid something all of their ancestors condemned as sin, but rather, they are given advice as to which kinds of contraception they should use - or, at the very least, they are encouraged to discuss their contraceptive options together and come to an agreement before the wedding day.

Fortunately, the culpability in such cases is probably minimal - it is not the fault of young men and women in this generation that their shepherds have utterly failed to give proper instruction. To their credit, we are seeing a trend today among young couples who, when faced with these previously-unknown facts about the historical Church's stance on contraception, are giving up their (dare I say it?) man-made traditions and throwing out the contraceptives.

Some, however, cling to their cherished way of life, and they can only be pitied, for they continue to practice what is - objectively speaking - a grave sin. Unless, of course, fully 1,930 years of unanimous Christian testimony is wrong - but then, how likely is that? And if that were true, then perhaps we should be examining whether 2,000 years of Christian testimony on such subjects as abortion and Sodomy are also wrong.

One final word about "the pill." An amazingly large number of people are still very much in the dark about this contraceptive option, and insist on contrasting it with the infamous morning-after pill. The difference is indeed negligible. The normal birth control pill is designed to do two things: prevent the woman from releasing unfertilized eggs according to her natural cycles, and put the woman's uterus in such a state that implantation is impossible.

In other words, if for some reason the pill fails in its first purpose, and a woman produces an egg that then becomes fertilized by a male seed (we pro-lifers call this "conception" and "the beginning of human life"), the pill will prevent that new life from becoming attached to the uterus - which means that it will be expelled at the end of that cycle.

It is a horrific tragedy that so many women are unaware of this, unaware of the fact that they have probably already (unwittingly) assisted in what amounts to a chemical abortion, by taking a drug that makes the womb hostile to implantation.

But that is precisely the rotten fruit that we should expect to come from practicing contraception - sin begets sin, regardless of individual culpibility or awareness.

And few people who are otherwise strongly opposed to abortion, and committed to seeing that particular holocaust come to an end, are aware that the pathway to Legalized Abortion (Roe v. Wade) was paved by Legalized Contraception (Griswold v. Connecticut).

Believe it or not, not so long ago (1965) the state of Connecticut had statutes which provided that "any person who uses any drug, medicinal article or instrument for the purpose of preventing conception shall be fined not less than fifty dollars or imprisoned not less than sixty days nor more than one year or be both fined and imprisoned."

Likewise, "any person who assists, abets, counsels, causes, hires or commands another to commit any offense may be prosecuted and punished as if he were the principal offender."

Thus, when Griswold, the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut, gave advice and counsel to married couples as to which methods of contraception would best fit their needs, he was punished by state law. The case went to the Supreme Court, and the state's statutes were made null and void - based on an appeal to a couple's right to privacy.

That set the stage for Roe v. wade, a case in which Griswold v. Connecticut was cited no less than four times as a precedent for this twisted understanding of "right to privacy." Thus, at least as far as things are considered from a legal point of view, contraception and abortion are inseparably linked. They will stand or fall together, as far as the courts are concerned.

The challenge is this then: if you're going to be pro-life, be truly pro (in favor of) life, not contra (Latin, "against") conception.

A Few Comments on Comments

I configured this blog a few months ago to accept comments posted by users who do not have Blogger accounts. I did this because I want to encourage comments and discussion, and the Blogger-account restriction will probably discourage that kind of activity.

However, I do request one small favor from those who leave comments: please sign your posts. You don't have to leave an email address, and I understand why you wouldn't want to. But at least leave a first name, or some initials.

Thanks for your cooperation.

"Anonymous" commented below:

Now all you have to do is discover the Holy Spirit could not have possibly left the Church after 1958 and is ever with the present Magisterium and then you're 'good to go'.

Would the individual who left this comment please kindly elaborate?

I am not a sedevacantist. I do not believe the Holy Ghost "left the Church after 1958."

In fact, if anything, I would say the otherwise-inexplicable ambiguity of the Vatican II documents is only explicable by the fact that the Holy Ghost used ambiguity in this case precisely to protect the Church.

I know how badly the liberal peritii influenced the council, and I know what sorts of explicit heresies they would have no doubt loved to elucidate in those documents. But they couldn't - they were prevented by, of all things, ambiguity. That is, the documents are not explicitly heretical - they are ambiguous enough that a traditional interpretation can be accommodated.

Given the odds, and given how badly the deck was stacked in favor of the liberals, I see that as no less than miraculous.

The Church cannot dogmatically define heresy. So when the council was overrun by Modernists, what does the Holy Ghost do? Inspire Pope Paul VI to publicly state that the council neither intended nor made any dogmatic statements.

That's the protection of the Holy Ghost.

As for the political mess, people need to understand that I'm not telling anyone how to vote - I'm presenting a defense of why I myself will not vote for either candidate. What I do not understand is the people who question both my patriotism and my Catholic orthodoxy for making that choice.

Folks, vote however you want to.

Kerry will run this country into the ground faster than you can say "cafeteria Catholic." But at least it might slow things down to have a Democratic president to balance out a Republican congress. Of course, if the congress goes Democrat after Kerry's election, then we've got serious problems.

Meanwhile, I strongly believe Bush will put his Bones priorities before anything else, so if a pro-death (but also Boneman) judge/senator/congressman presents himself as a possibility, I think Bush will give him a thumbs up and look out for a fellow Bonesman.

Obviously, Kerry would do the same.

That's precisely my point.

As I see it, my choice is to vote for Bonesman #1 or Bonesman #2 - and I'm having a difficult time feeling obligated to make that choice.

God bless you all.

Contraception and Sodomy, Part 2

A good friend of mine objects to the association of contraception and sodomy:

I come to completely different conclusions regarding contraception. The difference lies in the understanding of the purpose or purposes
of sex.

Precisely. And this is exactly what Fr. Smith's article said, although he took several hundred more words to do so.

In short: what is the purpose of marital relations, contracepted marital relations, and sodomite relations?

I submit that the purpose (end, goal, objective) of sodomite relations and the purpose of contracepted marital relations is exactly the same purpose: physical pleasure and a deepening of what is falsely called "love."

What elevates marital relations and places them on a plane to which sodomite relations cannot even hope to rise is the God-given ability to beget children. This is the one and only difference between sodomite relations and marital relations which employ contraceptives.

Absolutely NOT! Well, Ok, Maybe ...

The truly troubling aspect of this question of contraception is the fact that it has become a question at all.

The Protestant Synod of Dort issued a commentary on Scripture which called contraception just as bad as abortion.

John Calvin said contraception was the murder of future human beings.

John Wesley said contraception was "unnatural" and killed the souls of those who used it.

Straight to the point, Martin Luther did as I have done, and simply called contraception sodomy.

Even Arthur Pink declared that "We do not believe in what is termed 'birth control'."

When the Anglicans finally caved on this question (yes, the Anglicans - the same group that has recently caved on the question of sodomy ... as if the connection between the two isn't explicit enough), even then (Lambeth Conference, 1930) they made some very striking statements:

1) They acknowledged that "the primary purpose for which marriage exists is the procreation of children." (Resolution 13)

2) They proposed the question of contraception by first stating that there must be a "clearly felt moral obligation" - read again: "moral obligation" - before one could even begin to think in terms of "limit[ing] or avoid[ing] parenthood." (Resolution 15)

3) If one could point to a moral obligation - note again that the word is "obligation," not "whim" or "desire" or "financial necessity" - then the Conference acknowledges that the "primary and obvious method" of limiting/avoiding parenthood "is complete abstinence from intercourse ... in a life of discipline and self-control." (Resolution 15)

4) If there was a "moral obligation" to limit/avoid parenthood, and if there was "a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence" (Resolution 15), then - and only then - does the Conference admit of contraception

5) After allowing for contraception in these rare cases where both moral requirements have been met (a moral obligation to limit parenthood, and a morally sound reason for not using abstinence), the Conference immediately "records its strong condemnation of the use of any methods of conception control from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience." (Resolution 15)

Now, I ask: who among the Protestant denominations today thinks in these terms? Who asks, before reaching for the patch, the foam, the jelly, the latex, or the pill, if they have a strong moral obligation to limit the number of children they will have? And who, having answered that question in the affirmative, asks themselves if they have a morally sound reason for rejecting abstinence?

More to the point, who among the Protestant denominations will affirm, as the Lambeth Conference affirmed a mere 74 years ago, 1) that the primary purpose of marriage is to beget children, and 2) that the primary and obvious means of limiting procreation is total abstinence?

When Fr. Smith says that we can't look to Protestantism for our hope in the future, he's not being rude - he's reflecting on historical fact.

Prior to 1930, no Protestant would have affirmed that contraception was anything but a grave evil. Within 30 years of the Anglican compromise, the Sexual Revolution hit, and suddenly contraception became ok.

Think of that. The entire Protestant fortress - not just the Anglicans, not just the Lutherans, not just the Baptists, but every major denomination - collapsed within 30-40 years.

Went from "contraception is as bad as sodomy and abortion," to the unthinkable defense, "contraception is exercising good stewardship over what God has given you."

And we're not just talking about some matter of custom or practice, like whether or not to have services on Sunday night - we're talking about a matter of ethics and morals, a realm in which right is always right and wrong is always wrong.

Now, really, what are the chances that Protestantism will toe the line on abortion? On Sodomy? It's not like these issues are separate - they're all issues of morality, and they have all been equally condemned (up until 1930) as absolutely evil.

One Anglican stone in the windshield, and the tiny crack grows to a spider-web and eventually explodes within 30-40 years.

Likewise, one Anglican stone has just been hurled at the windshield called Sodomy is Evil. Given past historical data, how long will it be before every major Protestant denomination is not only not calling Sodomy "evil," but - as with contraception - is actually defending it as a positive Good, an exercise of God-given responsibility?

Oh, that will never happen - right?

But it did happen. In 1930. That's the problem.

I'm not interested in philosophical or Scriptural arguments - the argument was settled a long, long time ago, and every Christian in the world was in agreement.

What I'm interested in is what - after 1,930 years - changed? What stunning new insight warranted overturning the established belief of every Christian teacher in history? What evidence is there that this new and enlightened discovery - "hey guys, contraception isn't evil ... turns out it's Christian!" - which comes to us as a historical novelty in the same century that brought us the enlightenment of legalized Sodomy, the AIDS epidemic, legalized abortion, legalized and widespread divorce, the Sexual Revolution, the Feminist Movement, and pornography on every street corner - I say, what evidence is there that this new discovery about contraception is any different than any of these other societal evils? What evidence is there that this new discovery is better and more true than the universal consensus of 1,930 years' worth of Christians?

Alright, so one more time:

1) Sodomy: physical pleasure, deepening emotional union, no conception

2) Contracepted Fornication: physical pleasure, deepening emotional union, no conception

3) Bestiality: physical pleasure, deepening (one-sided) emotional union, no conception

4) Self-Abuse (or "solitary vice"): physical pleasure, deepening (fantasy-based) emotional union, no conception

5) Contracepted Marital Relations: physical pleasure, deepening emotional union, no conception

6) Marital Relations without Contraception: physical pleasure, deepening emotional union, true self-sacrifice, conception of children

... the LORD is acting as the witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, though she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant. Has not the LORD made them one [flesh]? In flesh and spirit they are his. And why one? Because he was seeking godly offspring. (Mal. 2:14-15, NIV)

"The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous ... if any woman ejects a fetus from her womb by drugs, it is reckoned a crime incapable of expiation and deservedly Onan incurred upon himself the same kind of punishment." (John Calvin, 1509-1564)

"Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a Sodomitic sin ... that worthless fellow refused to exercise love. He preferred polluting himself with a most disgraceful sin to raising up offspring for his brother." (Martin Luther, 1483-1546)

"Onan, though he consented to marry the widow, yet to the great abuse of his own body ... he refused to raise up seed unto his brother. Those sins that dishonour the body are very displeasing to God, and the evidence of vile affections. Observe, the thing which he did displeased the Lord - and it is to be feared, thousands, especially of single persons, by this very thing, still displease the Lord, and destroy their own souls." (John Wesley, Methodist, 1703-1791)

"The lewdness of this fact was composed of lust, of envy, and murder ... [murder,] in that there is a seminal vital virtue [future person], which perishes if the seed be spilled; and by doing this to hinder the begetting of a living child, is the first degree of murder that can be committed, and the next unto it is the marring of conception, when it is made, and causing of abortion ... his brother Er before, was his brother in evil thus far, that both of them satisfied their sensuality against the order of nature ... which may be for terror ... to those, who, in marriage, care not for the increase of children, but for the satisfying of thier concupiscence." (Westminster Annotations, 1657)

"Someone Tell Me What I'm Missing"

Once again, Fr. Smith does a bang-up job of bringing some much-needed clarification to the fog of confusion surrounding the election.

At least, I think it's clarification. I realize that few agree with me. So be it. Vote how you will - and I will definitely do the same. But this may explain a little better why I will vote the way I will: for neither Bonesman #1 or Bonesman #2.

*********************

Someone Tell Me What I'm Missing

Is anyone suggesting with a straight face that Senator Kerry is a worse man than President Clinton? Will it be any harder to swallow our government’s tyranny under a President Kerry than what we had to endure under President Clinton? What will be so intolerable about a Kerry presidency that we did not survive with the Impeached One in the Oval Office?

What is better about the respect for life in this nation today under President Bush versus what was given us by President Clinton? Partial-birth abortion was indeed banned by Bush, but then overturned by the courts. Federal courts are filled with judges who are notorious for their penchant for judicial legislation. These judges are confirmed by the Senate, which is overwhelmingly "moderate" in its toleration of child murder, which is to say that there are absolutely no qualms among senators about confirming to the federal bench judges who are in favor of killing babies under cover of law. President Bush has shown a willingness to campaign for pro-abortion senators at the expense of pro-life candidates in his own party. The judicial process will not be friendly to the pro-life movement until the Senate is pro-life. The Senate is a long way from being pro-life when the "pro-life" President seeks to defeat candidates for that body who campaign to end abortion.

If the goal is to bring an absolute end to abortion, how is that goal brought nearer by reelecting a man who clearly favors abortion through the use of "the pill", when the mother’s life is purportedly threatened, and in cases of rape or incest? President Bush has done absolutely nothing to ban RU-486. He has made it plain that Roe vs. Wade will be the law of the land under a second administration. How is the pro-life cause advanced under these circumstances?

And what is the plan to undo Roe? Will it come through legislation, through judicial fiat, through the amendment process? We have a man as President who claims to be pro-life, but he has done nothing whatsoever to establish the sanctity of human life as an essential part of American jurisprudence at the Constitutional level, which is the only meaningful level at which the government can effectively protect all life. Roe vs. Wade is a matter of Constitutional precedent. The only way to remedy its ill is to address the Constitution. When is a "pro-life" President or presidential candidate going to be held accountable by the pro-life movement to vigorously seek a constitutional resolution to this moral crisis?

Speaking of the Constitution, so long as we subject ourselves to a system of government in which the selfish, psychotic, and satanic whims of the populace can be enshrined as the highest law, we live in peril of the sins which cry to Heaven for vengeance being the basis of our culture. The problem is not merely the Godless candidates that we are being coerced into setting over us. The deeper problem is the Godless Constitution which they will swear ("So help me God"!) to enforce and uphold. Does no one understand that what men did once in 1973, even if undone in 2005, can be done again whenever the men ruling change their minds, their appetites, or their socks for that matter? The only defense for our rights and our lives - temporal and eternal - is to govern the nation according to the will of God, acknowledging the role of the Catholic Church as the guardian of the moral life, and seeking the good of all citizens through bringing them into Communion with the Bride of Christ.

Why does anyone think that our national plunge into the cesspool is going to be reversed while the men in charge continue to follow the blueprint spelled out in the document that began the plunge in the first place? Ladies and gentlemen, "Constitutional democracy" is what got us into this mess. How, pray tell, will the mess be cleaned up by having one man or another using the same Godless Constitution, heeding the voice of the same Godless people, encouraging the same Godless way of life?

What Contraception and Sodomy Have in Common

Vital Distinctions in Moral Theology

I. Introduction

Do the good! and Avoid evil! are the two moral imperatives given the faithful through the natural law, the Magisterium, and Divine Law. Through obedience to this dual admonition to seek sanctity and reject sin, the faithful cooperate with God’s plan of salvation. In His plan God’s activity is creation and redemption. Man’s activity results in God’s creation either being damned or glorified. What a man does is his contribution to the project of establishing what he is for all eternity.

Each of the two moral imperatives must be engaged in man’s life in the world. “Do the good,” is a relative command. “Avoid evil,” is an absolute command. Between birth and death man is given ample opportunity to obey these commands and thus be saved. Free will gives him the power to choose, but the power is dependent on the choice. Man’s free will is increased in choosing righteousness; it is diminished when he chooses sin. The saint is truly, fully, and eternally free as a son and heir of God. The sinner dies in perpetual slavery, bound forever to his sin, entirely incapable of asserting his will to happiness, which he falsely sought by disobedience to God on earth.

A man is able to do only so much good. His responsibility is limited by his very being. God alone can do all good. Man participates in the infinite goodness of God. It is divine grace and mercy which deigns to extend the infinite good of God to the finite man. Doing but a little good is rewarded with endless beatitude. In giving God His due, man receives infinitely more than is his due from God.

There is never an instance in which evil may be done. No sin is ever permissible, and none can be attributed to the divine will or imputed to the person of God. Sin belongs utterly to the world. Each man’s sins are uniquely his own. Although God gives the saved full portion of His life beyond their just desserts, the perdition of the damned is solely his own work and the fruit of his own demerits. Grace in its very being is a sharing in love; sin and its wages [which is] death are confined to the guilty soul and makes impossible any communion on earth or in Heaven.

Being, in keeping, with the divine will, is inherently good. God’s original creation received His benediction six times before he declared His work Very good! (cf. Genesis 1:1-31) This truth has been confused by many to mean that good attaches to the human person regardless of how he exercises his free will. It is a commonplace to hear a man’s sins related with the summary judgment, “But he’s a good person.” Man may have begun good, but original sin, concupiscence, and sinful actions disfigure that goodness in time and, potentially, destroy it for all eternity.

This divorce in the understanding of many between a man’s actions and his ontological state has resulted in a denial of the existence of sin; a misunderstanding of the nature of sin when it is acknowledged; a diminishment in the celebration of the Sacrament of Penance; a cultural mindset rejecting the possibility of damnation; and, ultimately, the refusal of many to positively seek the Kingdom of Heaven in righteousness. From brazenly indulging in sin to encouraging others in sin to maliciously attacking sanctity, individuals and the society at large have embarked on the journey toward utter moral depravity. Such a path is as old as Eden, but post-enlightenment man suffers not only from the pagan will to self-destruction, but also from the peculiar ill of the baptized who forget repentance – apostasy. A pagan in sin is in a deplorable state from which he can only rise; apostate Christians have fallen lower than Satan, have become salt without flavor, and in their wretched example are in peril of an eternal millstone. The state of Baptized Man falling back into sin is worse than when he knew nothing of salvation; indeed, seven devils have replaced the first [c.f. Matt. 12:43-45].

Any who doubt this description and estimation of man’s degenerating plight need only consider the modern proclivity not only to engage in sin, but to preach it, legitimize it, and in some cases mandate it. Married couples are encouraged to violate their Sacrament through contraception. Divorce is endemic to the point of being typical and thought well night-unto inevitable. And the national policies of the United States, Russia, and China have turned abortion into a form of “family planning”, economic stimulation, and legal obligation. The Church and the woefully small numbers of non-Catholics who dare decry this foul environment of license and demonic disobedience are alternately insulted, ignored, and imprisoned.

Perhaps nothing illustrates how entrenched the will to evil has become in mankind better than the juggernaut of the media, popular opinion, and legislative activism seeking to propagate homosexuality as a moral good. The not-so-subtle progression of the last forty years has taken us from a plea to tolerate sodomy - to decriminalizing sodomy - to encouraging sodomy - to assuming sodomy as an unremarkable human activity - to giving sodomy legal sanction on par with Holy Matrimony. A diabolically clever tactic to impose sodomy as a morally neutral element of human being has been to equate the state of homosexuality with the nebulous condition of race membership. This appeals to a bent toward sociology in the apologists for sodomy. Behaviorists among the advocates of sodomy would have us believe that the sin is no more to be criticized than other learned behaviors, such as how one learns speech from parents, socializing from peers, and taboos from society. Materialists of various stripes suggest that the inclination to sodomy is merely the physical manifestation of evolution, carried on the genes along with eye color, height, or the possibility of Down’s syndrome.

In each of these instances, the homosexual person is robbed of his humanity. He has no will in his condition. He indulges sodomy because of social conditioning or family psychology or biological disposition. He has no choice in how he manifests his intimate interactions with other persons. There is no moral element involved, for the causes of his nature are beyond his control.

Such must be the conclusion of the arguments advanced by those who insist that sodomy is natural and normal, without reference to the Creator’s will or the creature’s obligation to imitate His will. This utter inability to cooperate with the divine will or to effect the human will is the telltale symptom of sin. It is the slavery that comes from denying grace. It is the final separation of man from God, mankind, and life. It is sin’s wages fully reaped: the death and destruction of the man.

There is one other attempt to make homosexuality palatable as a human activity: the theological. Recognizing that free will is essential to the human person as a moral agent, shameless theologians, or charlatans making use of theology, proof-text Holy Scripture to support their desire to bring sin into the mainstream of the Faith. They would go so far as to aver that homosexuality is a true good, even a gift from God. Far from blaming God or anyone else for this proclivity to sin, these advocates of sodomy would thank the Lord for creating them in that way. Untold blasphemies against Jesus Christ Our Lord have been suggested in keeping with this depraved set of ideas [c.f. the abominable stage play, Corpus Christi, in which a gay man named "Joshua" recruits 12 gay disciples, engages in frequent sodomite acts, and is crucified at the play's end under the title "King of Queers"].

A variety of explanations accounts for this plague of words and deeds in defense of sodomy. An obvious one is that many desire the vice. Others indulge in other vices and find allies for themselves among sodomites. Certainly a large number of people are confused, both by the irrational rhetoric of the sexually licentious and by the urge to deal kindly with the sinners in their acquaintance. Political power and financial gain surely motivate many of those demanding the “right” to sodomy. It can not be discounted that these disparate groups and rationales have in common behind them, explicitly or unwittingly, the machinations of Satan. Not that these people necessarily desire allegiance with Satan, but he definitely desires them to preach and commit sin.

What follows is an examination of how homosexual advocacy attempts to normalize these sinful acts. That is contrasted with the initiative of God to bring grace to bear to effect His will to save all sinners. The counterpoint between man’s will in time and his final state in eternity forms the heart of this argument against sin and its advocacy. Homosexuality is not a matter of environment, genetics, or social policy, nor is it a morally neutral choice for human expression. It is an act of the will that, unrepentant, effects damnation and the complete degradation of the human being.

II. The Natural Aspects of Sexuality

There is a modern penchant for propagating confusion in matters of morality, particularly in regards to sexual morality. A popular (though never explained) aphorism is, “We all are sexual beings.” Either this is an entirely unhelpful platitude as meaningful as insisting that we all are living beings or spiritual beings or beings with appetites; or it is an assertion about man that reduces his identity to an exceedingly narrow aspect of his experience.

To describe mankind as “sexual” is to suggest that having sex makes the man, or that gender determines one’s psyche, actions, and sense of self. Given that most people most of the time are not having sex, it would appear that the notion, “We all are sexual beings,” is not referent to sexual activity. However, modernity’s shrill cries for the equality of the sexes seems to betray a disavowal of that charming saying, Vive la difference! If men and women are the same, then it seems odd that anyone finds it revelatory to claim that sex constitutes a defining element in human being.

A definition delimits, excludes, and distinguishes between things. Man as a sexual being either defines all things human as meaning sex, or sex as meaning nothing in practical terms. Man is a sexual being, a carbon being, an earthly being. O.K. So are petunias, manatees, and the neighbors’ cat. Stating the obvious is a peculiarly human attribute, true, but it is hardly useful as a tool in understanding the human.

What is really operative in the modern mindset is a mania for materialism. A description of man that begins and ends with sex completely preempts any discussion of the moral aspects of sexuality. The animals perhaps are free to do what comes naturally, but man without reference to the supernatural will gravitate toward things at which Mother Nature would blush – and then mercilessly punish her erring children.

It is curious how angry many become at the suggestion that AIDS is a judgment from God. Never considered, it seems, is how nature judges the unnatural. The wages of sins against nature meted out by nature are infertility, disease, physical deformity, sexual dysfunction, and indeed death – among many other things. Promiscuous, licentious, amoral people who disbelieve in the wrath of God must still contend with the fury of Mother Nature scorned.

Man is both physical and spiritual. A human being does not have a body and a soul; a human being is a body and a soul, an embodied spirit. It is true, and laughably obvious, that one can not discuss human being without acknowledging his physicality, including (but not obsessing on) his sexuality. It is far truer, however, to discuss human being beginning with that which is higher than the animals, definitive of his relationships with other people, and, most importantly, most like his creator, God.

If one is to understand man, and by extension his sexuality, one begins with God. For man is made in God’s image and likeness. God has more to say about man’s identity than any amount of studying man, animals, and biochemistry can conceive.

God is love. God is good. God creates. These simple truths reveal the motive, the content, and the purpose governing man’s existence. Why God does anything is predicated on the divine attribute of charity. How He does His will flows from His infinite goodness. What He does is to offer being reflective of His own being, the highest form of that on earth being man, a corporal being endowed with a rational soul capable of knowing, embracing, and imitating the divine will.

Thus, man can love. Man can be good. Man can create. The natural basis for effecting the supernatural task of man imitating God is Holy Matrimony. Man and woman can will mutual love. They can do so in obedience to the moral law. Through that obedience, they cooperate with God in bringing forth new life like themselves able to be like God.

Man as a sexual being must be a moral being if he is not to do violence to his very being. In the very act of carnal knowledge, man must be endeavoring to know God, serve His will, and obey Him in love. Failing this, man is less a sexual being than a depraved being.

Either one is obeying God or one is sinning. Men and women are called to discern God’s will for them to cooperate with Him in procreation. The only licit context for this is within Holy Matrimony, whose primary purpose is to beget and raise children for the glory of God. Contraception, self abuse, coitus interruptus, and sodomy (in which heterosexuals can engage as well as homosexuals) deny the proper end of marriage, destroy the sanctity of the persons committing such acts, and degrade the human person. Far from assertions of sexuality and human being, these sins unmake the divine order of things. Man does not effect his being through sex, but through obeying God in all things.

Here one sees that the fundamental distinction in human sexuality is not heterosexual versus homosexual, but obedience versus disobedience. One can obey God’s will in many ways through heterosexual acts, but not in every instance. There is never an instance in which the divine will is obeyed through homosexual acts.

Furthermore, obedience to God’s will is a broader category than defining which acts of sex are licit and which are forbidden. Obeying God’s will can involve continence in married couples, the vow or promise of celibacy among those with religious vocations, and the responsibility to be fruitful and multiply for married couples. God’s will in love is not so much about what one must not do as it is hearkening to God’s call of what one is created to do in keeping with divine Providence. Some are called to be eunuchs for the Kingdom [Matt. 19:12]; some are called to raise up sons of God born not of flesh or the will of man, but the will of God; and some are called to help people the earth.

No one is ever called to thwart, deny, or eliminate God’s gift of life to men. There is no such thing as a sexual being or a sexual act not meant for the increase of life on earth with the goal of life in Heaven. Though there might be natural obstacles to fertility, none may ever impede the possibility of conception through action, inaction, or intent of the will. If one seeks to love one’s spouse through the conjugal act, then one must first love God – and His will to life – with one’s whole heart, whole mind, whole soul, and whole strength. Hatred of God’s will to life manifested by the use of latex or chemicals, the abuse of the physical act itself, or the refusal of the will to accept the nature and meaning of the marital bond for procreation, is gross disobedience, destructive of the human body and soul, and potentially damning.

III. Homosexuality as a Manifestation of Concupiscence

Perverse connections have been drawn between the current crusade to legalize and normalize homosexuality, and the civil rights movement of the 1940’s-60’s. Homosexuality, so goes this argument, is not to be discriminated against. The dignity of man requires that all people be treated equally regardless of their sexual behavior.

If immorality can be criminalized – such as theft, perjury, or fraud – then the only argument that can be sustained to justify the decriminalizing of sodomy is that issues of morality do not pertain to sex. It is merely a matter of the body and its consensual use. People go to jail because they violated someone’s rights. Homosexuals are expressing mutual love, harm no one, and do nothing different from what heterosexual couples do.

“We all are sexual beings” has a partner in its crime of refusing definition. “Consensual sex”, i.e. “What people do in their own bedrooms”, gives carte blanche to a whole host of behaviors that one prays would still be found deplorable by most people. Associations exist to legalize the sodomizing of boys by men, “marriages” between three or more people, and the practice of polygamy. One assumes that all of these are examples of “What people do in their own bedrooms”. Why should they be forbidden but homosexuality permitted?

Well, before that question is answered, one must ask for a definition of homosexuality. It is oddly appropriate that “gay rights” advocates attempt to co-opt the civil rights movement. Both suffer from an unwillingness or inability to define just whose rights are being defended.

Over the years certain people in the United States of America have been referred to as “darkies”, “niggers”, “colored people”, “persons of color”, “blacks”, and “African-Americans”. Efforts to define this class of people have made of them a mere 3/5 of a person, or have rendered anyone with 1/16 of his blood from a tainted source as a full member of the group. Although skin color plays a large role in determining this classification, the colors in question range from white enough to “pass” to skin so dark as to have a blue cast to it. Hispanics, some Caribbean islanders, and some Asians have skin colors that fall within this range, but are not considered part of this group. There is an “enlightened” understanding of this issue in which correcting past wrongs is sought, but no distinction is made between one member of this group who is a multimillionaire in the suburbs, another who is a middle-class professional in a small city, yet another who is incarcerated for gang activity in a big city inner-city, and a fourth living in third-world squalor in the rural Old South.

What makes a “black” person who he is has never been adequately discussed, much less defined. Is it skin color? Is it family of origin? Is it racial discrimination? Is it government description? Is it cultural? Is it because a rights organization says so? Is it some secret algorithm incorporating these and other considerations?

In a like manner, no one has explained what homosexuality is. Is it an inclination? Is it a set of actions? Is it one act? Is it a subculture? Is it being an effeminate man? Is it being a masculine woman? Where is the line between “effeminate” and “sensitive”, between “masculine” and “tom-boy”? Is it genetic? Is it learned? Is it a continuum or an absolute?

Because of this ambiguity, many would say that all the more we should not discriminate because of “sexual orientation”. There are so many factors involved that none can be blamed for why he is as he is. Aside from reducing the homosexual to a non-moral agent incapable of choosing whether or not and how to have sex, this leaves society in a state of confusion. What behavior is being protected by gay rights?

Is it the bathhouse scene where AIDS is being incubated in thousands of host organisms? Is it the media juggernaut recruiting our young people to tolerate, then celebrate, then adopt this “alternative lifestyle”? Is it the abomination of church and state recognizing a “marital union” between same-sex couples?

Oh, wait. We should not get so upset over “What people do in their own bedrooms”.

A person belonging to a racial group – whatever one can make that mean – has very little control over his inclusion therein. One’s skin color is not a matter of choice. It is the height of injustice to inflict punishment on someone because of a physical attribute.

Homosexuality, conversely, is a matter of willed decisions. Either one chooses to act on sexual temptations or not. Either one gives into impure thoughts or not. Either one elects to be identified with morally perilous behavior or not. When the choice is made to act immorally in a public setting, the family, the state, and/or the Church have a moral obligation to teach, to warn, and if need be to punish those who disobey the moral law.

And remember: what makes any sex act immoral is its disobedience to God’s will toward human increase through Holy Matrimony. Homosexual acts are unnatural in their use of sex toward sterile ends. Thus, there is no such thing as “marriage” between homosexuals, no context in which homosexual sex is ever licit. Homosexual acts deny the family, weaken the state, and offend God and His Church. Far from protecting people so that they can commit homosexual acts, it is the duty of charity to decry the acts, to define them as sins, and to lead their participants to repentance.

IV. Homosexuality as a Depraved Assertion of the Will

“Nature versus Nurture” is an age-old argument about the cause of homosexuality. Are homosexuals born or are they made? Does the homosexual become so over time, or does he discover his nature as it has existed from birth or before? Can one be homosexual and not know it? Can homosexuality be cured?

If indeed homosexuality is not a matter of moral choice, if one is merely born so, then there can be no talk of recruiting, accepting, or curing members of the group. Remove morality from sex and it does not matter how sex is engaged or with whom. Most people who adopt this position would ask only that parties involved in sexual acts be consenting adults.

Why consent and adulthood are so insisted upon is never fully explained. Inconsistency in this argument is betrayed in the existence of laws against adultery and statutory rape that are rarely enforced; the lamentations over teen pregnancy accompanied by the distribution of contraception to minors; and the warped homoeroticism marketed to youth in the mass media paralleled by the aforementioned refusal to prosecute statutory rapists in the face of near-hysteria over homosexual pedophilia. Where confusion reigns, Satan rules.

On the other hand, if homosexuality is a learned behavior, one influenced by environment, then the ranks of homosexuals would increase dependent on home life, societal taboos, and moral considerations. A lack of vigilance against sodomy by the Church with a concomitant offensive by social forces in favor of sodomy would result in rising numbers claiming affiliation with the homosexual “lifestyle”. A culture in keeping with Church teaching on the moral law would have few examples of homosexuality manifested, would experience repugnance at the notion that sodomy is normal, and would enact civil laws reflective of the moral law against acts of sodomy.

Modernity prides itself on its “enlightenment” regarding sexual morality. Many would maintain that a significant number of homosexuals are present in any population. Repression by Church and state sends homosexuals underground; tolerance allows “gays” to “come out of the closet”.

Were they in the closet because they were born homosexual and came out at the first safe opportunity? Were they leading heterosexual lives until they learned a new sexual “freedom” from an enlightened culture? Is a repressed homosexual who does not act on his inclination truly a homosexual? Can a person choose his sexuality depending on his circumstances?

Immigrants to the United States face an oft repeated dilemma: does one cling to the culture of the mother country or should one become an “American” as soon as possible? This raises questions about what constitutes culture, the nature of American citizenship, and how American culture might be defined. Is being an American a legal reality, a matter of postal address, or a state of mind expressive of convictions one holds about freedom and democracy? Americans have argued about this quandary since there has been America.

Regardless of how such dilemmas are resolved, or not, it is clear that being an “American” is a matter of volition unlike citizenship in any other nation. One can not choose to not be of Japanese descent if one’s ancestors on both sides of the family going back five generations all lived in Nagasaki. Americans, however, can choose to flavor their sense of heritage with ethnic considerations at remote removes from where they stand now.

An Irish-American’s great-grandparents may have fled the Famine, but he embraces their Celtic heritage as if he himself had just gotten off the boat. African-Americans rarely know from what geographic part of that huge continent their forebears came, much less what tribe or language group, but insist on a recognition of their long-lost homeland as part of their definition of self and a sense of place in America [editor's note: the author of this piece is himself an "African-American" - he knows whereof he speaks]. Hispanics yet observe national holidays of their countries of origin, wear traditional clothing, and maintain language and cultural customs in family and civic life as closely as possible to the manner in which they are practiced south of the border.

Being an “American” is far more a matter of citizenship than of ethnicity. An American citizen can celebrate or ignore the ethnicity of his ancestors, but he can do neither without an effort. An Englishman in York need think not at all about how to manifest who he is within his native culture. A New Yorker, however, might be “Sicilian” to his family, “Italian” to the clerk renewing his library card, “white” on the census form, and a “Yankee imperialist dog” on vacation in France.

The human person acting on his sexuality has some decisions to make as well. Will he heed God’s call to holiness? If so, he will discern a sexual life solely in the context of Holy Matrimony open to life. This person is analogous to the man who has received his ethnic heritage and sense of identity from his ancestors in their native place. He knows who he is, where he is from, and how he is to live: a child of God, begotten of water and the Spirit, called to perfection like unto God his Father.

Unfortunately, the United States of America acknowledges neither slave nor free, man nor woman, Greek nor Jew – and rejects God and His Church as the source of his identity. Thus, America and Americans are confused and confusing. America has abandoned the natural source of identity that comes with ethnicity, and has abandoned the supernatural source of identity that comes with the Faith. The United States does not recognize that they are God’s people, nor do they have a unified sense of what is meant when they say, “We the people…”

Homosexuals want sex without reference to life. Their actions reject and ignore their responsibility to God and His Church. They are joined in this dynamic by users of contraception, practitioners of self abuse, and supporters of divorce. These are moral stances not only within America, but they are embodied by America itself. America is a conglomeration of atomistic, individualistic, and hedonistic persons who can not and will not choose to be a people or to be people of God.

To the extent that other nations embrace the American antipathy for a received and communal morality (allied to a love for moral and legal positivism), those nations cease to be a people as well. A country that rejects communion in faith with God will find that they lose not only God, but their nationhood and themselves. Religious wars are not initiated by the faithful, but by the irreligious. Faithful Catholics do not assault faithful Catholics, but the faithless will attack anyone and everyone, including themselves.

Homosexuality is not the cause of the dissolution of nations and cultures; it is a symptom thereof. The nation or culture that rejects God will indulge homosexuality and innumerable other morally depraved acts. Homosexuality is not a choice, but the result of a choice to reject God. Homosexuality is predicated on the negative: it is from the will against life, against nature, against God. Homosexuality is a rejection of the good in order to do evil.

One can not fall into such depravity. One must assert oneself, one’s very being in that direction. Society might make homosexuality easy, but it can not make homosexuality necessary or inevitable. The homosexual is neither born so nor made to be so. The homosexual wills himself away from the source of birth, the power to create life, and the Author of true freedom.

V. The Ontology of the Homosexual

Sodomy is an outward sign of the auto-demolition of a culture. Any culture that sanctions, much less celebrates, sodomy has lost the will to live. It can not stand very long after immersing itself in such depravity. It is highly unlikely that sodomy is the only vice pursued by such a culture.

In a similar vein, the individual who submits his will to moral depravity will find destruction as well. The homosexual culture is replete with promiscuity, violence, drug abuse, mental illness, and disease. These are things that kill the body. Far more, however, is at stake.

A curious contradictory phenomenon occurs in verbal usage concerning “persons with disabilities”. On the one hand is the insistence that such persons are not defined by their disabilities, i.e., they are not disabled persons but persons with disabilities. Their sense of identity emphasizes their personhood rather than their physical state.

On the other hand is a peculiar estimation that they are not persons with disabilities, but “differently abled persons”. These are people with strengths different from those possessed by “able-bodied persons”. This mindset seeks to de-emphasize the idea that a “normal” person exists, instead assuming that all people have gifts to offer and weaknesses to overcome.

Thus, there are hearing-impaired people who refuse hearing aids and speech therapy, desiring the exclusive use of sign language. Parents of children with severe autism will take them into public places where problematic behavior is more likely to occur in an effort to treat them to ordinary life experiences. Provision was made by the Professional Golfers’ Association – in compliance with a court order – to change tournament rules to accommodate a handicapped golfer, sparking a rancorous debate amongst lawyers and sports fans.

Allowances must be made on earth to assist and to protect those disadvantaged by poverty or disability. Charity demands that such assistance be generously offered, and humility requires that it be gratefully received. If this is not acknowledged by the common sense of a culture, it is surely a matter of the sensus fidei within the Church.

Eagerness to ease the plight of our beleaguered brothers on earth should not blind us to our common call to strive for Heaven. There are no poor saints, no handicapped saints, no oppressed saints around the Throne of God. All such earthly ills are healed in Heaven. “Neither slave nor free, man nor woman, Greek nor Jew”, can be expanded to include “rich nor poor, athlete nor cripple, helper nor helpless”. One’s material possessions and physical attributes do not determine one’s salvation.

At the same time, Heaven has no place for “the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted ... murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars.” One’s body is neither damnable nor redeemable; it is the use of the body that is damned or saved. The body does not choose perdition or salvation, but the body is damned or glorified depending on how one chooses to use the body.

Some would argue that homosexuality is more than just sex. It is about commitment and mutual support and love. Leaving aside the recurring problem of a definition that defines nothing – “commitment”, “support”, and “love” say nothing about homosexuality that can not be said about marriage, siblings, and friends – another problem arises. Where in homosexuality is commitment to the Faith that condemns moral depravity? Where is the mutual support in sanctity that binds the faithful to help one another to remain pure in thought, word, and deed? Where is the love of God that would recoil in horror at offending the Divine Majesty by rejecting life, asserting man’s will over God’s, and committing abominations begging Heaven for vengeance?

Choosing to be homosexual by committing oneself to the “gay lifestyle” is akin to choosing to be blind, deaf, or lame. It is asserting a physical attribute or action as a moral identity, desiring a state not intended by God as one’s final state of being. It is accepting as one’s fundamental existence a disposition of the mind, a craving of the flesh, and an exercise of the will entirely at war with God’s design for creation, redemption, and beatitude for man. Everyone, it is to be hoped, would consider it a perversity transcending the absurd to ask to be blind, deaf, or lame for all eternity. To define oneself as being homosexual is to demand that one be refused the Beatific Vision, hear the wailings of the damned instead of the choirs of the heavenly hosts, and be shackled in the bonds of sin for all eternity.

This, far from the gifted state proponents of sexual license would have us believe it, is the final and ultimate negation of self out of which flows the will to homosexuality. Nothing is gained by this willfulness and all is lost. The homosexual ends possessing neither God nor his countless accomplices in sin nor himself.

It should be added that anyone morally “tolerant” of homosexuality, though not necessarily a practitioner thereof, receives the same judgment as the homosexual. One who receives the prophet because he is a prophet, receives the prophet’s reward [Matt. 10:41]; one who accedes to sin is willing sin, and receives the sinner’s punishment [Ezek. 3:18; Rom. 1:32]. One can not believe that homosexuality is good and believe that Christ speaks only the truth. They who believe that Christ lies about homosexuality are doing not Christ’s work, but the will of the father of lies. To will homosexuality for oneself or another is to will not salvation but condemnation.

But to the wicked, God says:
“What right have you to recite my statutes,
or to take my covenant on your lips?
For you hate discipline,
and you cast my words behind you.
If you see a thief, you are a friend to him;
and you keep company with adulterers.

“You give your mouth free rein for evil,
and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother;
you slander your own mother’s son.
These things you have done and I have been silent;
you thought I was like yourself.
But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.”
Psalm 49:16-21

VI. Charity and Homosexuality

All sexual immorality is ultimately a matter of sinning against charity. The unchaste are also uncharitable. It is loving neither to God nor to neighbor to indulge in acts of disobedience to the divine will, oriented toward a creature rather than to the Creator, and willfully exclusive, either physically or mentally, of the increase of life.

Acts of sexual immorality of any kind are entirely incapable of establishing a communion of souls in love. What is asserted instead is the satisfaction of appetites, addiction to carnal pleasure, and participation in human relationships referent only to man and in denial of God. Charity’s greatest sign is the giving of life. Sexual immorality is essentially sterility – of body, of mind, and of soul. Such is decidedly not of God, not of God whose very being is love.

The person, heterosexual or homosexual, who predicates love on having sex is thoroughly in error. Love can be and must be expressed in a multitude of ways, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Were this not the case, filial piety, fraternal sympathy, and sanctity would be impossible. One loves one’s parents, friends, and God not primarily without sexual relations, but exclusively without sexual relations.

Within Holy Matrimony, conjugal love is expressed through sexual relations with the understanding, the desire, and the intent of cooperating with God in bringing new life into the world. Where this understanding, desire, and will are absent, sexual relations are illicit. Expression of conjugal love can and must take other forms. Those who insist that the conjugal bond is not sufficiently engaged without sex (as distinct from the conception of children) as its primary expression, lack imagination, limit their human interaction with their spouses, and probably are not praying.

Not every act of sex will result in conception, but every act of sex is for procreation. If couples are not trying to make babies, why is the sexual act being engaged? Surely, sex without mutual desire for love is forbidden. Equally inconceivable should be the thought of sex without a mutual desire for life.

God finds even the heavens wanting when He judges creation. The moral standard within Holy Matrimony is exceedingly high, befitting the sublime call of married couples to play such an integral role in creating life in the divine image. It sounds impossible – and so it is for man, but with God all things are possible.

Charity expressed by the Cross of Christ is the motivating force behind the conjugal bond. Christ giving up His body for His Bride the Church brings many children into being, adopted by God the Father through water and the Spirit. Husbands and wives, too, sharing the Cross, die to self as the two are made one, and give rise to new life offered for the glory of God the Father. This goal, not their affection on earth, is the purpose of their union. All marriages end with death. The fruit of holy marriages, children of God, have an eternal destiny. It is an inadequacy bordering on the insulting to reduce such an exquisite reality to the level of carnal desires.

If the heavens will be found wanting on Judgment Day, and married couples suffer nothing short of Calvary to effect God’s will in them, then the plight of the obstinate homosexual is most perilous. He is not open to life. He is disobedient to God. He craves human pleasure over pleasing God. What is to be done with him?

“Love your enemies, do good for those that hate you, bless those that curse you, and pray for those who abuse you” (St. Luke 6:27-28). It is not charitable to consign someone to hell through failing to warn him of his sin (see Ezekiel 3:16-21; 33:1-16). It is not kind to lead someone to believe that his depravity is somehow commendable (see St. Matthew 18:6-9). Such warnings are not for people who are inclined to agree at first (see St. Luke 5:31-32), but must be given whenever and to whomever they are needed (see 1 Timothy 1:8-10; 4:6-16; and 2 Timothy 4:1-5). In the end it matters not that the message is despised and the messenger reviled (see St. Matthew 5:11-12), only that God’s will is done (see St. John 17).

Those who claim to love God must also love their brothers beset by sin. The best expression of love for a sinner is to help free him from his sins. To know Christ and His righteousness requires sharing that knowledge. One can hardly say that he loves his brother while leaving his brother languishing in the ignorance of sin. Those who walk in the darkness of sin are in infinite need of charity expressed through the light of faith offered for the forgiveness of sins.

St. Augustine writes about the necessity of the faithful to draw the sinner out of sin – especially when the sinner refuses repentance. St. Paul tells of the compulsion in Christian charity to preach the Gospel, to proclaim forgiveness in Christ, and through that forgiveness to set aside the old ways of sin and take on newness in Christ. Jesus speaks of a zealous, passionate, burning desire for His Father’s house, to ignite the world in love, to offer Himself that the Kingdom may be established. Such sentiments must motivate the effort to bring sanctity to bear on matters of physical intimacy. The rejection of sin is but the prelude to embracing the law of love.

VII. Conclusion

Homosexuality is a veritably demonic inversion of the natural order. Where Holy Matrimony is the union of man and woman in communion with the divine will to bring forth life, homosexuality is the unnatural combination of two persons of the same sex in utter disobedience to God in the midst of acts entirely devoid of fertility. Homosexuality denies the supernatural orientation of man, is sterile on the natural level, and degrades man through its unnatural carnality.

One might be tempted to ask why anyone would choose to be homosexual. The fundamental answer lies in the rejection of the good, of the true, of the holy, in short, a rejection of the Faith. Once a person abandons sanctity, mediated by the Sacraments in the Church, he will find himself open to every temptation.

It is the mystery of iniquity why any one person chooses to succumb to a given sin. Only God knows the full motivations of the human heart. What is certain is that all sin flows from a proud, disobedient refusal to seek God and His good. The only defense against any and every sin is the humble submission to God with the whole of one’s heart, mind, soul, and strength.

The gravest ill of homosexuality is more profound than the fact that in itself it is an abomination. Homosexuality is so wrong and so evil because it is part of a larger and more insidious attack on Holy Matrimony and the divinely ordained order of things. Homosexuality represents the war of the evil against the holy.

Evil, however, can not conquer good. But good can yield to temptation, wallow in sin, and deny itself by becoming evil – unless the created good is wholly united to God’s infinite goodness. Alas! man can abandon the search for the good.

Holy Matrimony is in peril because man the modernist has denied its true end. This denial is most graphic among sodomites, but the first and worst culprits are men and women united in marriage. Where contraception is allowed, marriage is destroyed. If children are not the natural end of marriage, then sexual unions that accomplish the other, the secondary ends of marriage are made licit. If sex is not for making babies in heterosexual couples, then fornication will lead to abortion, recreational sex will include sodomy, and all will preclude the traditional and natural definition of marriage as fertile, permanent, and social.

Contraception begins a direct progression where marriage need not produce children, becomes fluid and indefinable, and a matter of private rather than communal concern. This utter rejection of the natural goods of marriage results in the impossibility of supernatural good being sought or received. To avoid evil is not necessarily to embrace good; to reject one good results in the final rejection of all good.

It is rationally impossible to maintain that sex can be a matter of recreation among heterosexual married couples, but not among sodomites and fornicators. Either sex is an absolute openness to God’s gift of life in the family, or it is a relative invitation to be accepted or rejected according to merely human considerations. Sex rendered sterile is either a moral evil or a relative good, and if it is a relative good it does not matter whether the source of sterility is a contraceptive intent, contraceptive devices, or acts of sodomy. The argument that sodomy is unnatural is met by the equal truth that the prevention of conception in the act of conceiving offends both nature and nature’s God. The whole of the moral order is ultimately denied by contraception and the contraceptive mentality.

Married couples differ from fornicators in their use of contraception in only one way: fornicators are consistent with or better than their morals, whereas married couples are hypocrites. For each day that a contracepting fornicator maintains his illicit relationship with his companion, he is treating her better than their morals deserve in their fraudulent imitation of marriage. A husband contracepting with his wife is treating her no better than a fornicator treats his mistress. Both relationships, hard experience and hard statistics strongly predict, will come to an unhappy end.

Political correctness in the world frowns on telling the truth about sodomy: promiscuity, disease, mental illness, child abuse, and offense against God’s Majesty. Another kind of political correctness forbids denouncing contraception for what it is: dehumanizing, deceitful, ineffective, medically perilous, and mortally sinful. Sodomy and contraception share a common principle: that sex is not a natural cooperation with divine grace in the context of Holy Matrimony for the purpose of increasing life both for earth and Heaven; but is instead a mere matter of physical pleasure among consenting parties – even children.

The divorce of the natural bond between man and woman from the supernatural reality mediated by the Church through her Sacraments has led to the woeful state of affairs self-inflicted upon modernity. Fornication, teen pregnancy, abortion, disease, self abuse, and divorce are the foul fruit spring from the tree of sexual “liberation” rooted in the depravity of married people abandoning fidelity to the divine order. If married people will not insist on the sanctity of the conjugal act, it is not to be expected that anyone else will come to the defense of human chastity.

Sins against nature have not become common ex nihilo. They are the corruption of the great good of Holy Matrimony. This wretched condition should not surprise anyone. It is the direct outgrowth of he half-millennium apostasy into which what once was Christendom has plunged itself. As G.K. Chesterton said, when the supernatural is rejected, one gets not the natural, but the unnatural.

What is wanted is not an offensive against homosexuality so much as a crusade in favor of Holy Matrimony and its purpose of life conforming to the divine image and likeness. The problem is less that people want to be homosexual than that they do not want to be married, they do not want to be holy, they do not want to be obedient to God, they do not want to be Catholic, they do not want to go to Heaven. Our goal is not to effect a society that merely rejects the abomination of homosexuality, but to establish a society that rejects depravity in favor of desiring only God’s will. Or to end as we began, our task is to avoid all evil by doing only good.

Father Lawrence C. Smith
Sacerdos vagus

17 September 2003
The Impression of Christ’s Wounds on the flesh of St. Francis of Assisi

Catching 153 Fish

In the Gospel of St. John, the last chapter tells the story of the apostles pulling in a miraculous catch of fish - much like the story recorded in the beginning of Our Lord's ministry in Luke 5. But one significant detail stands out: St. John records that they caught exactly 153 fish.

Why 153?

St. Jerome said that he had learned from Greek zoologists that there were 153 species of fish known at the time - thus, the catch of 153 fish (taken with Our Lord's words that the apostles would be "fishers of men") represents the apostolic work of bringing the Gospel to the entire world, to all the nations - to all "species" of men.

But St. Augustine had a somewhat more interesting interpretation.

You begin with the number of The Law - the number 10 (for the Ten Commandments).

But since "the letter kills," and it is "the Spirit that gives life," the Holy Spirit must be added to the Law.

And what is the number of the Spirit? Because the Spirit's work is one of sanctification, and since God sanctified the seventh day of creation, St. Augustine said the number 7 was appropriately attached to the Spirit.

Likewise, Isaiah speaks of the seven gifts of the Spirit - so the association of 7 to the Spirit is reinforced.

So we add the Spirit to the Law, or 7+10, and we get 17.

But what does 17 have to do with 153 fish?

If you add the individual numbers together, from 1 to 17, guess what?

1+2 = 3
3+3 = 6
6+4 = 10
10+5 = 15
15+6 = 21
21+7 = 28
28+8 = 36
36+9 = 45
45+10 = 55
55+11 = 66
66+12 = 78
78+13 = 91
91+14 = 105
105+15 = 120
120+16 = 136
136+17 = 153

Thus, 153 represents all of those who are converted through the Apostolic "fishing," and who share in the life of Grace (7), by which they are enabled to keep the Law (10).

Divine Math. Gotta love it.

For the more astute Catholic reader, recalls also that a full Rosary contains 153 "Hail Mary" beads (10 beads X 15 decades + the 3 beads recited for Faith, Hope, and Charity).

Also, Our Lady appeared at Fatima on May 13, 1917, June 13, 1917, July 13, 1917, August 13, 1917, September 13, 1917, and October 13, 1917.

From May 13 to October 13 there are exactly 153 days. And the appearances, which took places over 153 days, ended in October, which had already been venerated as the Month of the Holy Rosary ever since the Victory at Lepanto in 1571 - 153 days, the Month of the Rosary? Hmmm.

And what was one of the prominent messages of Our Lady of Fatima? "Recite the Rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary." In fact, she identified herself at Fatima as "The Lady of the Rosary."

Too coincidental, isn't it?

Ten Fathers on Mary

Here are quotes from ten Fathers of the Early Church, each of whom give their witness to the Church's understanding of the Virgin Mary. Here and there, I have interspersed commentary from John Cardinal Newman, a convert from Anglicanism in the 1800s.

I. St. Justin Martyr (160)

... since we call Him the Son, we have understood that He proceeded before all creatures from the Father by His power and will ... and that He became man by the Virgin, in order that the disobedience which proceeded from the serpent might receive its destruction in the same manner in which it derived its origin. For Eve, who was a virgin and undefiled, having conceived the word of the serpent, brought forth disobedience and death. But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her: wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of God; and she replied, "Be it unto me according to thy word." (Dialogue with Trypho, 100)

II. Tertullian (180-200)

And even reason here maintains the same conclusion, because it was by just the contrary operation that God recovered His own image and likeness, of which He had been robbed by the devil. For it was while Eve was yet a virgin, that the ensnaring word had crept into her ear which was to build the edifice of death. Into a virgin's soul, in like manner, must be introduced that Word of God which was to raise the fabric of life; so that what had been reduced to ruin by this sex, might by the selfsame sex be recovered to salvation. As Eve had believed the serpent, so Mary believed the angel. The delinquency which the one occasioned by believing, the other by believing effaced. (On the Flesh of Christ, 17)

III. St. Irenaeus (180-190 AD)

In accordance with this design, Mary the Virgin is found obedient, saying, "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word." But Eve was disobedient; for she did not obey when as yet she was a virgin. And even as she, having indeed a husband, Adam, but being nevertheless as yet a virgin ... having become disobedient, was made the cause of death, both to herself and to the entire human race; so also did Mary, having a man betrothed [to her], and being nevertheless a virgin, by yielding obedience, become the cause of salvation, both to herself and the whole human race ... And the prophet, too, indicates the same, saying, "instead of fathers, children have been born unto thee." For the Lord, having been born "the First-begotten of the dead," and receiving into His bosom the ancient fathers, has regenerated them into the life of God, He having been made Himself the beginning of those that live, as Adam became the beginning of those who die. Wherefore also Luke, commencing the genealogy with the Lord, carried it back to Adam, indicating that it was He who regenerated them into the Gospel of life, and not they Him. And thus also it was that the knot of Eve's disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith. (Against Heresies, Book III, cap. 22, 4)

For just as the former was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His word; so did the latter, by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should [bear] (portaret) God, being obedient to His word. And if the former did disobey God, yet the latter was persuaded to be obedient to God, in order that the Virgin Mary might become the [advocate] (advocata) of the virgin Eve. And thus, as the human race fell into bondage to death by means of a virgin, so is it rescued by a virgin; virginal disobedience having been balanced in the opposite scale by virginal obedience. (ibid., Book V, cap. 19, 1)

Commentary

Now, what is especially noticeable in these three writers is that they do not speak of the Blessed Virgin merely as the physical instrument of our Lord's taking flesh, but as an intelligent, responsible cause of it ... [the Three Fathers] unanimously declare that she was not a mere instrument in the Incarnation, such as David, or Judah, may be considered ... it follows that, as Eve co-operated in effecting a great evil, Mary co-operated in effecting a much greater good. (Newman, The Virgin Mary in the Life and Writings of John Henry Newman, p. 212-3)

For a moment put aside St. Irenaeus, and put together St. Justin in the East with Tertullian in the West. I think I may assume that the doctrine of these two Fathers about the Blessed Virgin, was the received doctrine of their own respective times and places ... the coincidence of doctrine which they exhibit, and again, the antithetical completeness of it, show that they themselves did not originate it ... we must inquire, what length of time would it take for such a doctrine to have extended, and to be received, in the second century over so wide an area; that is, to be received before the year 200 in Palestine, Africa, and Rome. Can we refer the common source of these local traditions to a date much later than that of the Apostles, since St. John died within twenty years of St. Justin's conversion and sixty of Tertullian's birth? ... add to the concordant testimony of these two Fathers the evidence of St. Irenaeus, which is so close upon that of the School of St. John himself in Asia Minor ... supposing three such witnesses could be brought to the fact that a consistory of elders governed the local churches, or that each local congregation was an independent Church, or that the Christian community was without priests, could Anglicans maintain their doctrine that the rule of Episcopal succession is necessary to constitute a Church? (Newman, p. 214-5)

IV. St. Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386)

Through Eve yet virgin came death; through a virgin, or rather from a virgin, must the Life appear: that as the serpent beguiled the one, so to the other Gabriel might bring good tidings. (Catechetical Lectures, Lecture XII, 15)

V. St. Ephrem Syrus (died 378) - "is a witness for the Syrians proper and the neighbouring Orientals" (Newman, p. 216)

Through Eve, the beautiful and desirable glory of men was extinguished; but it has revived through Mary. (Opera omnia in sex tomos distributa, II, p. 318, quoted in Newman, p. 217)

In the beginning, by the sin of our first parents, death passed upon all men; today, through Mary we are translated from death unto life. In the beginning, the serpent filled the ears of Eve, and the poison spread thence over the whole body; today, Mary from her ears received the champion of eternal happiness: what, therefore, was an instrument of death, was an instrument of life also. (ibid., III, p. 607, quoted in Newman, p. 217)

VI. St. Epiphanius (320-400) - "speaks for Egypt, Palestine, and Cyprus" (Newman, p. 217)

She it is, who is signified by Eve, enigmatically receiving the appellation of the Mother of living ... It was a wonder, that after the transgression she had this great epithet. And, according to what is material, from that Eve all the race of men on earth is generated. But thus in truth from Mary the Life itself was born in the world, that Mary might bear living things, and become the Mother of living things. Therefore, enigmatically, Mary is called the Mother of living things ... Also, there is another thing to consider as to these women, and wonderful, - as to Eve and Mary. Eve became a cause of death to man ... and Mary a cause of life ... that life might be instead of death, life excluding death which came from the woman, viz., He who through the woman has become our life. (Panarion, 78:18, quoted in Newman, p. 217-8)

VII. St. Jerome (331-420)

Death came through Eve, but life has come through Mary. (Letter XXII, To Eustochium, 21)

VIII. St. Augustine (354-430)

By a woman death, by a woman life. (Sermon 232, 2, quoted in Newman, p. 219)

It is a great sacrament that, whereas through woman death became our portion, so life was born to us by woman; that, in the case of both sexes, male and female, the baffled devil should be tormented, when on the overthrow of both sexes he was rejoicing; whose punishment had been small, if both sexes had been liberated in us, without our being liberated through both. (De Agone Christiano, 24, quoted in Newman, p. 219-20)

Latin Text: Huc accedit magnum sacramentum, ut quoniam per feminam nobis mors acciderat, vita nobis per feminam nasceretur: ut de utraque natura, id est feminina et masculina, victus diabolus cruciaretur, quoniam de ambarum subversione laetabatur; cui parum fuerat ad poenam si ambae naturae in nobis liberarentur, nisi etiam per ambas liberaremur.

IX. St. Peter Chrysologus (400-450)

Blessed art thou among women; for among women, on whose womb Even, who was cursed, brought punishment, Mary, being blest, rejoices, is honoured, and is looked up to. And woman now is truly made through grace the Mother of the living, who had been by nature the mother of the dying ... Heaven feels the awe of God, Angels tremble at Him, the creature sustains Him not, nature sufficeth not; and yet one maiden so takes, receives, entertains Him, as a guest within her breast, that, for the very hire of her home, and as the price of her womb, she asks, she obtains peace for the earth, glory for the heavens, salvation for the lost, life for the dead, a heavenly parentage for the earthly, the union of God Himself with human flesh. (Sermon 140, quoted in Newman, p. 220)

X. St. Fulgentius, bishop in Africa (468-533)

Come ye virgins to a Virgin, come ye who conceive to her who conceived, ye who bear to one who bore, mothers to a mother, ye that suckle to one who suckled, young girls to the young girl. It is for this reason that the Virgin Mary has taken on her in our Lord Jesus Christ all these divisions of nature, that to all women who have recourse to her, she may be a succour, and so restore the whole race of women who come to her, being the new Eve, by keeping virginity, as the New Adam the Lord Jesus Christ, recovers the whole race of men. (Sermon 36, quoted in Newman, p. 221)

Commentary

Such is the rudimental view, as I have called it, which the Fathers have given us of Mary, as the Second Eve, the Mother of the living: I have cited ten authors, I could cite more, were it necessary; except the two last, they write gravely and without any rhetoric. I allow that the two last write in a different style, since the extracts I have made are from their sermons; but I do not see that the colouring conceals the outline. And after all, men use oratory on great subjects, not on small; not would they, and other Fathers whom I might quote, have lavished their high language upon the Blessed Virgin, such as they gave to no one else, unless they knew well that no one else had such claims, as she had, on their love and veneration. (Newman, p. 222)

Credo in Unum Deum ...

In many liturgical denominations, the congregation recites the Nicene Creed. I wonder, though, how many are aware of what "Nicene" means? Or, for those who know that it refers to the Council of Nicea, how many know what the purpose of this First Ecumenical Council was, and what was the historical context?

It all started with a man named Arius (250-336 AD).

In 306, he got into some trouble with the Bishop of Alexandria when he started following after the schismatic Meletius. The Catholic Encyclopedia records, however, that "a reconciliation followed, and Peter ordained Arius deacon."

His ecclesiastical career already off to a rocky start, he was later excommunicated by the Bishop - only to once again be restored, this time by the new Bishop, Achillas. It was this Achillas who, in 313 AD, made Arius a priest.

In - or around - the year 318, he began to push and promote his views about Jesus Christ. He meant well, no doubt. As an Eastern Christian, he almost assuredly had the Eastern mindset, which is reluctant to bring too much definition to the Holy Mysteries. Those things which God has revealed to us, but which transcend human understanding, ought to be simply believed and reverenced without allowing the mind to become too curious about the particulars.

For example, it was in the Western (Latin) Church that the moment of Eucharistic Consecration was defined. The elements become the Body and Blood of Christ when the words "this is my body," and "this is my blood" are spoken. In the East, however, it is less a question of which particular words of the prayer effect the change - the Anaphora is seen as a whole. When it starts, there is bread and wine; when it is finished (after many prayers which make up the Anaphora), there is the Body and Blood of Christ. To ask which specific words in the Anaphora cause the change is to ask useless questions.

Arius taught that Jesus Christ was - as St. Paul had written - the firstborn of Creation. That is to say, He was the first created being, a view which necessarily excludes the idea that Jesus Christ is one with God the Father. In holding such a view, Arius was only drawing upon a modified version of the Gnostic heresies that had preceded him.

He was condemned by his local synod of Alexandria, but that was far from the end of the story. By the time of his condemnation at Alexandria, he had already won many prelates to his views. History records that he promulgated not only writings in defense of his ideas, but he also wrote songs that encapsulated his teachings - which no doubt helped spread his opinions across the land.

The Church was facing the very serious prospect of a major schism, and Emperor Constantine got worried - not that he was a serious theologian (at one point, Arius convinced the Emperor of his views), but as a serious secular ruler, he saw the danger of ruling a religiously-divided empire.

Thus, an Ecumenical (read: universal) council was suggested, so that all the bishops of the world could come together and reach a universal agreement about this issue. Nicea was chosen as the location, presumably because that location allowed the greatest number of bishops to attend. St. Athanasius records that 318 bishops attended the council.

With the Arian question before them, the Ecumenical Council proceeded to draw up this symbolorum, or "creed":

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (gennethenta), not made, being of one substance (homoousion, consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth.

Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven.

And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead.

And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost.

This Creed, then, is a very precise dogmatic formulation meant to define with crystal clarity the Christian faith regarding the relationship between Jesus Christ and God the Father. The Creed tells us what Jesus is ("begotten") and what He is not ("made").

It's amazing what importance the Church attached to these words. They insisted that Jesus and God were homo-ousion, "of the same substance"; the Arians insisted Jesus and God were homo-i-ousion, "of similar substance." The difference between orthodoxy and heresy in this case was whether or not you added one letter (the Greek iota) to the word.


The Council insisted that these issues were non-negotiable. No room for "disagreement in fraternal understanding," or "unity in diversity" here.

And whosoever shall say:

1) that there was a time when the Son of God was not
2) that before he was begotten he was not
3) that he was made of things that were not
4) that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father]
5) that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion

- all who so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them.

This Council reveals something important about the nature, authority, and force of Tradition in relation to Scripture. One Protestant historian writes, "The Fathers of the Council at Nice were at one time ready to accede to the request of some of the bishops and use only scriptural expressions in their definitions. But, after several attempts, they found that all these were capable of being explained away. Athanasius describes with much wit and penetration how he saw them nodding and winking to each other when the orthodox [bishops] proposed expressions which they had thought of a way of escaping from the force of."

This really goes a long way towards demonstrating not only the early Church's regard for Scripture's authority, but also of the absolute necessity of an orthodox Tradition which serves as an interpretive grid, through which the Scriptures must be read.

The Bishops were ready to use sola scriptura at the Council, but they ran into a very practical problem (which we still face today): Scripture can be used by heretics to support their novel teachings. Thus, the Church had to employ a word never used by Scripture: homoousion. Were they wrong to insist that this word be used? Were they "adding to Scripture" their "man-made traditions" by doing so?

Not at all. They were demonstrating the greatest reverence for Scripture, by setting boundaries around the Holy Book which would prevent it from being violated and defiled by heretical teachings.

And yet, has not homoousion become just as indispensable to Christians as the very Scriptures themselves? Who can separate the two? True, many do not know the word - but 1,700 years of usage has firmly fixed this word as the silent guardian of Scripture. You read Our Lord say "the Father is greater than I," and you are not for a moment troubled or tempted to believe that God the Father is a different being - why? Because homoousion has, in concept if not in actual word, been passed down to you as part of the Church's Tradition - you received Scripture in one hand, and Tradition in the other (or, depending on your demonination, parts of that Tradition).

I always think of this whenever someone says something like, "Where is the word transubstantiation found in Scripture? Or the word indulgences? Or Purgatory?" Brother, if you want to go down that road, then we're going to have to go all the way back to Nicea and start from scratch - with no guarantee that we'll walk away with the right understanding of the Trinity.

So keep this in mind the next time you recite the Nicene Creed - you are, consciously or otherwise, both receiving and preserving an ancient Tradition of the Faith. You recite those words because holy men who went before you took the time to think through these issues and hammer out these definitions.

(This also may prove to be an effective apologetic the next time the JW's come to your door; you can sit and argue with them for hours over the meaning of Scripture, or you can simply recite the Nicene Creed to them, tell them this has been the faith of the Church for 1,700 years, and ask them why you should abandon the ancient Faith for their novel ideas)

************************

It was in 381, at the First Council of Constantinople, that the Creed was modified somewhat, bringing it closer to the form we recite today:

We believe in one God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, that is of the substance of the Father, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father: by whom all things were made, both in heaven and earth.

Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, and was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary, and was made man, was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and on the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father, and from thence he shall come again with glory to judge both the quick and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father; who, with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.

In one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.

Several centuries later, the phrase "And in the Holy Ghost ... who proceedeth from the Father" was modified by the addition of the word Filioque, "and the Son." This is the form of the Creed which is recited today.