Prosthetic Bodies and Marriage

I recently re-watched the first season of the sci-fi anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's an excellent piece of work. While the show is neither Christian nor Catholic, it raises interesting issues for Catholic theology. One such issue concerns prosthetic bodies and marriage.

A number of characters on the show are cyborgs, or humans with fully functioning prosthetic bodies. Most of their humanity, physically speaking, is in the approximate 3% of their brain that is still the original flesh-and-blood they were born with. Everything else is their prosthetic body and brain.

While this technology is far from real-life, very similar technology is likely to develop as the science of engineering artificial human body parts develops.

So the question then becomes whether marriage and the marriage act would be appropriate for persons with prosthetic bodies?

In Catholic ethics, intentional frustration of the procreative faculty of a given act (by artificial contraception, or by other methods) is considered an intrinsic and grave evil.*

Prosthetic bodies, at least as imagined by Ghost in the Shell, are certainly not impotent, as at least a few episodes of the series seem intent on pointing out. But they do seem contraceptive or rather to act as contraceptives, or at least to be sterile or infertile.

Sterility in itself would be no problem for a Catholic couple. But if the prosthetic body itself acts as a sort of contraceptive, this seems to change the game. I suspect for those of us who call ourselves Catholics, the morality of marrying and the marital act where prosthetic bodies are concerned will hinge largely on the question of whether those bodies are considered artificially contraceptive, or merely infertile or sterile.

Perhaps the situation is most analogous to that of women who have had hysterectomies.** In this case the  intent of the procedure in the first place would seem to play a role. If that is the case then erhaps that procedure, not the marital acts following it, would be the act which one could properly call right or wrong or should at least take the primary focus in theological-ethical discussions.

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* This doesn't mean all contraception is the worst evil ever (lots of things are grave and intrinsically evil in Catholic tradition), but it does mean that it cannot be considered in Catholic moral tradition to be a "good" thing.

** One might ask why I'm not noting vasectomies here--I considered it, but a good key difference is that as far as I know, while not all men in marital situations are expected to reverse them, vasectomies are not candidates as moral actions in Catholic theology, whereas hysterectomies can be for medical reasons.

Love is Free as in Speech

The following post is mostly cribbed from notes I was taking while unfolding and expounding some ideas to my friend Nick at King Burrito one day. As such, where the word "Nick!" is interjected, it indicates a thought I feel I owe primarily to him, though he had opportunities to more subtly influence all of this as it was being written. So thanks in particular to him for taking part in this interesting process. Another friend of mine, whose blog I would link if he had one, made an appearance here, though it's in the form of a hopefully-verbatim quotation from several months ago.

An analogy from the open-source software community:

Free as in speech, libre: free from becoming someone's exclusive intellectual property. Used here we mean that a thing is free as in speech insofar as it is freely given, uncoerced.

Free as in beer, gratis: free from a cost, costing little or nothing. 

Open-source software is often both libre and gratis, but depending on the software and possibly on the license it can be free as in speech, that is, having its source code free from becoming someone's particular copyright possession, without always being given away at no cost.

A friend from work once claimed to me that "free love" was an oxymoron. I asked why. One of the examples from his response ran roughly this way:

If you pay for dinner on a date, and later on things become romantic in a sexual sense, is that love free?

There were two problems, however, with what I perceived to be the presuppositions at work.

Firstly, was there a subtle equation of physical affections with love, or even eros particularly, here?

 NICK!  Physical affection [including sexual contact] is an act of will.

In other words, physical affections may or may not represent/signify love and/or eros particularly, and even if they do, neither love nor eros reduce to physical expression.

Secondly, my friend's explanation of his statement seems to rest on the idea that "free" means free as in beer, not free as in speech. But the use of the phrase "free love" indicates that it rests at least partly on the definition of "free" as in speech.

 NICK!  The hippie definition of "free love" is freedom from the social and natural law constraints, as well as [often] from commitment to the other.

The truth the hippies may have sought, I believe, was a love free of societal pressure, fully committed to the other.

Now to my work-friend's example: Insofar as it becomes fornication and is thus enslaved to sinful nature, that gift is not freely given in love and is not free. But if it's not free, it's not free for those reasons, not because someone happened to pay for dinner beforehand. In this case, he was probably thinking of a date between unmarried persons, so the love is almost certainly not-free if I took his intent to be that sexual intercourse was taking place.

In a discussion tangentially related to this one I was analyzing with a friend a similar, though more innocuous example, and I was trying to figure out what made the love free. His answer:

 LUKE!  "Because it's a gift."

There you have it, folks:

Love is libre: Freely given.

Love is not gratis: There is a cost.

Freedom of choice in an act, then, does not imply no cost to the act.

We hit upon something subtle here that does not appear in my notes: We have now made a definite identification that love is an act and not merely a possession, abstract or concrete. It is a thing that can be given or mediated in the form of gifts to another.

Nick gave the better phrasing, or at least the better half of it, when thinking of the gifts we give to signify love:

 NICK!  The gift is free, but the gift costs something to produce.

All gifts truly given in love will cost something. They will cost one's time (basically all of them), means or craft  or money (a meal, a trinket), one's personal bubble (physical displays of affection), or a share in one's inner thoughts and life (perhaps especially letters or simply sitting and talking.) The gift is free but the gift costs something. Inevitably gifts truly given in love will build up to be gifts that cost you your guise of invulnerability, your walls.

Truly free love will have walls, but they will be walls to keep out sin and slavery, and not merely walls around oneself to maintain invulnerability. And this free love will allow the persons engaged therein to tear town their walls to each other.

What I've said here was prompted mostly by reflections on love in a more romantic sense free, though a good deal of it obviously applies to love in all its forms and I (along with the persons prominently quoted to help define what the freedom is in love) take our presuppositions from the Christian tradition of Love and its meanings therein. Note the cost of Love:

image from wikimedia commons

Two closing questions. I don't have an adequate answer for either and thoughts are welcome here, or on Facebook, or wherever:

If God is Love as part of His nature, is God's love free as in speech?

Is there a cost to receiving love from other humans? From God? If so, what is that cost?

On the Phrase "Sex-Positive"

A term often used to describe conservative viewpoints on sex by feminists, especially secular feminists, is that they are "sex-negative." This term is often used to describe viewpoints that seem to put down sex, to subordinate it to other things and thus to limit it to less than its full potential with respect to human fulfillment and pleasure. Thus the conservatives are thought sex-negative because they see certain limitations on the proper use of sexuality and the body, and the feminists are thought sex-positive because they see, at the least, fewer limits on what can or should be considered the proper use of the same.

Of course as Chesterton notes, there is something disproportionate in human sexuality, such that "the moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant." But I think Chesterton was wrong on the details of what this means, if he meant exactly what he said. As soon as we attempt to elevate sex, to be "sex-positive," it is not sex which becomes a tyrant. Sex goes from being a servant of God and nature to the slave of lust, and we go from slaves of Christ to slaves of our passions.

The moment we attempt to be sex-positive, to rule by consent instead of by divine and natural intent, we become instead sex-negative and pleasure-positive. We become convinced that sexuality and our bodies are things that can be abused in the name of our pleasure; we treat it as something there for our pleasure, not for the purposes endorsed by the divine, which do not themselves conflict with pleasure but which include over and above enjoyment the unity of persons and the propagation of the species.

It seems then that the sex-positive feminists, in desiring to liberate sex, have liberated it from freedom and unto our abuses. If you don't believe me, watch where the world goes on matters of sexuality in the next few years. Observe the broken-hearted people who can't properly manage their "friends-with-benefits" relationships. Wonder why people who use consent, rather than divinely-ordered responsibility, as their barometer for acceptability, so often wind up with emotional messes on their hands. And then tell me that these people are the sex-positive and liberated ones.

Crazy Kids

There's a strange impetus in our modern society against the idea that marriage really lasts till death. After all, only 50% of marriages do. What does that make the people who try and get married, who try and make it last? It seems like it makes them a bunch of crazy kids, setting themselves up against the "wisdom" of the world that these things just don't last. Even The Office, one of the more optimistically romantic shows on television, has an episode where a character in relationship with another, upon hearing that her parents are getting divorced, remarks that it was her parents, or his. Now it's true that in this case the good doesn't last forever. Marriage was only designed to last until the Resurrection. But it's nothing but cynical to say that the good shouldn't be expected to last as long as it ought to last, that is, until one partner is dead. It betrays a despairing lack of hope for the Sacrament of Marriage, and the love that can flourish between two people even in today's "modern world." I'm on the side of the crazy kids--the ones who say "one partner, one marriage, we'll make it till the end," and whether or not I ever become one of them I will remain on their side. Now it's true that perhaps marriages are more in danger nowadays, but that's a reason for caution, for being properly crazy and not marrying based just one one's feelings, for actually making a commitment to routinely take care of each other. It is not a case for despairing of actually making that lifelong commitment; that despair is the abdication of responsibility, not the sign. So I'm going to stay on the side of these crazy kids, warring against this Satanic cynicism that's been somehow disguised as wisdom.

Catholicism and the "Modern Notion" of Consent

So bear with me. There's this "modern notion of consent" that we've seen some objections to, the one that had been given in the book Yes Means Yes, a group of feminist essays about dismantling cultures which aid and abet rape. In particular it seemed to run up against understandings about what it meant for a husband and wife to have a 'marriage debt' to each other. And a few weeks ago I finally got it formulated for myself as to what I don't like about the modern notion with respect to the Christian view of marriage. (In particular, a feminist friend of mine, and Eric, and others, have all served as sounding boards for my formulations.) I'm going to pull pretty heavily from commenters Eric, Nick and CJ to try and establish certain points. So enjoy.

Eric had said:

Your first question was what I meant by saying there is no analogy between modern "consentual sex" and marriage. I said this because your first post had a comment along the lines of "I would agree to such-and-such a statement in the book, provided its in the context of marriage." If you look up "marriage debt" you will see why there is no analogy.

The statement you're speaking of, I believe, is:

Obviously my stipulations about the proper and moral context of this initiative differ from that of secular feminism, but within a marital framework, if we truly consider the husband and wife equal in dignity, regardless of whether we're complementarians or egalitarians, is there any good reason not to treat the two as having an equal weight not only in consenting to their bodily union, which the serious thinkers on the subject in the Christian tradition has already taken seriously, but also in initiating it, in asking for that special bodily intimacy?

I need to write shorter sentences. I'm going to "trim the fat" a little, but I'm leaving the original there in case I trimmed something essential by mistake. (Please, someone let me know if I trimmed something essential.

[W]ithin a marital framework, if we truly consider the husband and wife equal in dignity [...] is there any good reason not to treat the two as having an equal weight not only in consenting to their bodily union [...] but also in initiating it, in asking for that special bodily intimacy?

I am in agreement that the modern notion of consent can't be applied here. Perhaps I spoke hastily or was slightly mis-phrased. What I do maintain is that reading Paul's injunction that a couple not deprive each other except by mutual consent does not imply that persons must, whenever asked, consent, except for the reasons Aquinas lists. Aquinas obviously has some major concerns about concupiscience--concerns with no small reason--but seems to overstate the case. The natural reading of the text seems to me, again, a guy with no Greek lexicon, to indicate that a marriage ought to have a healthy sex life unless there's some reason not to--not that every request must be met unless there's some reason not to. That said, I definitely don't think it's good for 'deprivation' to last longer than a few days without mutual consent; at that point I'd call it borderline; much further and I'd be willing to go as far as sin. I will say I think it's more important that two persons in a marriage have the same understanding of marriage debt, and that this understanding be consistently applied regardless of gender, than that every person who calls themselves Christian or Catholic has that same understanding. That is where I draw the line; if there is still disagreement, we will have to agree to disagree about this.

Now Nick had written, regarding the modern notions of consent:

The modern notion of consent operates in this framework: "You can only *use* me when *I* gain something from that *use*". That's prostitution. Pope Leo XIII called it "legalized concubinage."

I actually agree with what Nick is saying about the modern notions of consent; they do seem to (mostly) boil down to a mutual use. I think one big concern of the Yes Means Yes people is to correct hatever imbalances there might be in perceptions of the importance of male vs. female enjoyment of the act itself. That in itself is fine. I should hope the Church doesn't teach that one is more important than the other. And I don't at all think it would be Christian or loving to be unconcerned with how much one's spouse enjoys having sex. As a general pattern it does seem like the ideal presented by the Yes Means Yes crowd veers more in the direction of consenting mostly if not almost only when one is seeking pleasure. I should note that nowhere in the book have I actually read that said--but the overall tone suggests that consensual and pleasure-seeking sex is the ideal. And I sort of agree with them on that, but not really. I'll get back to that.

Nick went on to say:

The Catholic notion of "consent" (so-called) operates in different framework: "Through Charity (in which *I* love God and neighbor selflessly), *I* give myself to *You* in order that *You* grow in holiness and maturity as Spouse." (1 Cor 7, esp v3-5) Now, in a fallen world this is not easy for most of us, but it's a clear ideal, which the One True Church promotes and guards.

Yes. This goes along with what CJ had said in his response to Eric:

[S]ex within marriage must be understood [...] active consent, while not getting us all the way there, does reclaim some of that essence. It is an active giving and an active receiving. Yes, there is a marriage debt. But that marriage debt in light of the Christian Gospel is not to be fulfilled in the way we view, say, the ten commandments. These are, in fact, marriage debts owed by Christ's Church, his bride. But she is not to fulfill them because she has to, but because she wants to.

I actually agree with this, for certain definitions of "want." Of course forcing someone to go to Mass and take communion against their will would be wrong, but to convince them to will such so even if they didn't particularly desire it would not be. I definitely don't want to do service when I do in the sense of actively desiring it, but I do in the sense that I actively will it. Clearly there is a space in which we can will something, without wanting it in the colloquial sense, though in the sense of going to Mass or making love with our spouses desiring it is certainly the ideal.

So, as I see it, the things that are wrong with the 'modern notion' of consent seem to be:

1) It's tied up too much with seeking of pleasure in a hedonistic sense.
2) It does not, at least not prima facie, allow for consent to a reasonable sexual life with another person in the future.

So the overall tone of YMY, as I said above--and I have said this, and I may be wrong--but to me it suggests that consensual and pleasure-seeking sex is the ideal. And like I said, I sort of agree. I agree if we mean the pleasure of contemplating God, the pleasure of the proper union of spouses, the pleasure of two persons given to each other in Christ. In other words, pleasures that transcend the hedonistic. As for criticism (2), consent seems very much an immediate and for-the-moment thing in modern thought, and there is truth to this; a lack of consent for a sexual act makes it wrong. But in Christian marriage there is a sort of implied consent which does not imply one's consent whenever asked, but more of an agreement not to deprive one's partner of that facet of the relationship; there does seem to be an implicit agreement that one will consent in the future, sometimes, but not all of the time.

So with all of this in mind--here's my moral heirarchy. Here's what I'd call "good, passable, ehn, bad, worse, abhorrent" with respect to different uses or misuses of the 'marriage act'--specifically, here, the act within the Christian context of marriage. I think this does apply more or less to other marriage as well, but I can only claim to speak most fully about what I see as the ideal coming from my perspective as a Catholic.

Good: Husband and wife with a healthy sex life, because they want (desire) to have one.
Passable: The same, but because they want (will) to have one.
Ehn: The same, but just to pay their marriage debt. So, really, probably not as healthy as it could be.
Bad: Either a lack of sex that constitutes "deprivation" on the part of one partner or the other, without mutual consent for prayer. Here's where we cross the line into sin, as we've clearly violated a Scriptural mandate. (Again, I can't know for each couple when this line is crossed.)
Worse: Coercion on the part of one partner or the other under threat of sin.
Abhorrent: Marital rape.

I'm not sure if there's a giant difference between my descriptions for "passable" and "ehn." So I'm not sure exactly how else I'd construct Christian marital consent; obviously this was not a rigorous process for me, and quite frankly I don't know if it's something I want to try and construct with much more rigor unless I find myself breaking into academia and studying Catholic sexual ethics as part of my living. So there it is, for now at least.

Anyway, Hope you all have enjoyed this ride as much as me. Comments as usual are welcome. This will probably be the last Yes Means Yes post for quite awhile.

More Yes Means Yes: Comments, Etc.

So I've actually finished reading Yes Means Yes now. There'll be some more reaction-posts coming, but there are some comments that have been made that warrant a further reaction. If you want this post to make the maximum amount of sense you should probably go back and read the initial post on YMY and then the follow-up post where I discussed some of the questions/comments a friend had left on the first post. Please note that I am pulling comments from both threads; if you're wondering why nothing of Eric's comment on the first post is here, it's because the second post was intended to address that. I'm going to save some of Eric, Nick and CJ's commentary especially for another post, because I think their comments were helpful to me in probing what this "modern notion of consent" is that we dislike, as opposed to the general notion of consent that I would argue should be agreed upon by Christians. Still to come on the YMY front: I'm going to attempt to respond to a particular essay in the book that has yet to be mentioned on this blog. I'm also going to attempt a post about "modern notions of consent" that seem so controversial. If I have the energy and the development on this front I might also attempt some post about what a Christian model of sexuality might actually be, because I'm not satisfied with the feminists' model, as a Catholic, at least not the Yes Means Yes crowd's model. Commenters will be addressed in alphabetical order.

Commenters' words will be in bold.
My responses will be in normal text.

Enjoy!

Stuff CJ said:

Dan, good reasons why women shouldn't initiate? If that's the way the cookie crumbles in the relationship, far be it from me to limit the way God's love works in people; however, while most of these radical feminists will probably scoff at my suggesting this, I have rarely met a woman who doesn't wish for the initiate from a real man (I think you know how I mean this) and not just these p[r?]etty boys we find in today's society. Physical archetypes would be the reason I would cite, but many people find the interpretation of physical realities woefully close-minded (though still living by the die-hard line of scientific method and empiricism).

Either by socialization or by biology, there's bound to be truth to what you're saying. Not sure if it's quite as scientific and empirical as you claim. The main trap I now consider it part of my project to avoid is considering female sexual desire as lower than male. (I don't think you're doing that.) Note that I don't necessarily consider either desire to be really, really important, but that I am simply saying they seem to be equal in importance if the persons are equal in dignity.

Plus, I'm still not sure how to apply such a concept in modern times.

I think you lost me a little. Which concept don't you know how to apply?

Yes, I know Dan, I really need to proof these things before I post them.

Yes. Yes you do.

Stuff Eric said:

Marriage does necessarrily include the physical. If two people "marry" with no desire to have sex (or to do so without children) they are entering into something of a sham marriage.

I do agree with you on this point (and, I should note, not just you but the Church) but I feel like we need to discuss this in such a way so as to leave room for, well, not calling the marriage of Mary and Joseph a sham. (For any non-Catholics who might be reading this, this is an issue that Catholics such as Eric and I have to deal with that you might not, because Catholic Tradition insists that Mary and Joseph's marriage had no physical intercourse.

What I said is that the physical union of the spouses is not the ultimate end, or the high point, of marriage, no matter how many spiritual analogies modern Catholic sex educators use.

Agreement. But then what is its ultimate end? I'm not tied down to one answer to that question.

Regardless of whether or not you happen to like the language of debt, it's clear that sex in Christian marriage is not necessarrily consentual in the modern sense, even if it should not for that reason be forced (though it does not mean one can use force or coercion, it is in fact a serious sin to deny one's spouse).

I agree that it's not consensual in the modern sense, but I should expand on that later. Regarding "serious sin:" Do you mean that anytime one's spouse asks, it would be a sin to deny? Or do you mean it would be a sin to deny for a significant period of time, unless one was doing so for some purpose considered legitimate? The Pauline passage--on my admittedly naive and un-scholarly reading--doesn't seem to force a reading that every request must be met on pain of sin. It seems, prima facie, at least as reasonable to read it simply as the admonition that all marriages have a healthy sex life. Nonetheless the Pauline passage does point to an irreconcilable difference between Christian views and the modern views of sexuality, which I'll get to in a later post.

Cho's scenario does not make sense in the context of marriage, because a spouse giving in to the other even though he/she doesn't really want it is not necessarrily a bad thing in marriage, whereas it is in the logic of modern sexuality. I don't say of course that it's an ideal in marriage, but it is something of a duty as far as I understand it.

Yes. I'll try and give some more nuanced thoughts on the subject later. I do think--and I don't know if I said this in my first post--but I do still think it's worthwhile for Christianity to speak to situations that aren't marital, if only to see if--as a temporary measure, not as a solution--we can help move them further from being screwed up. Many of the reasons Cho gives in her testimony for having said yes were pretty awful reasons, and might have been even worse in the context of marriage.

I don't think it helps anything to praise consentual fornication, simply because it does not pile on other sins.

I'll take progress where I can get it. I don't intend, however, to praise it as if progress automatically meant a lack of sin. In this case, 'those other sins' refers to one of the few things condemned by the Church as being never, ever, okay. I don't praise consensual fornication. But it's closer to Truth than rape.

In fact, it may in some way be worse because it stabilizes the sin. Someone who is able to maintain a reasonably stable sex life because they've embraced the rules of consent may be much further from seeing how damndable the whole situation is. In fact, it may in some way be worse because it stabilizes the sin. [...] It seems to me that people in this situation are only questionably better off morally, and in terms of the possibility of conversion may be much further off.

I do share your concern. In some ways it reminds me of Lewis's caution in The Four Loves that sometimes love is most dangerous when it most approximates the love of God, and yet is not that love. Certainly there is the danger that in trying to reach into an incredibly sinful situation we might accidentally simply decrease the sin and make the lesser amount of sin seem more acceptable than it is.

That said, I would prefer the situation of consent to the situation of rape because the latter seems not only worse in degree but also in kind--there is a perversion there of sinning not just against one's own body but also against the body of another, in a way not present in simple fornication. The question that must be immediately answered, for me, is not which situation we prefer--it is what we say and where we stand when someone says "no" to the proposition of sex--or even when they answer in a nonverbal "no."

I did not say feminism created this problem on its own, but that it helps to create the grey areas that make it possible. Obviously the wickedness of man's heart is reason enough for any sin, but we now have a social space in which this sin can be normalized and even embraced as a "lifestyle."

Eliminating those social spaces is tricky. I'm not sure any one culture has ever done it.

I don't necessarrily reject every possible idea which has ever been called "feminism" [...] by some liberal definitions of the word, I am a muslim. [...] I see no reason to constantly redefine the term in such a way that it becomes completely disconnected from the historical movement which gave it its name.

Hence my irritation with modern redefinitions of fundamentalist to include anyone who takes religion seriously.

I'm quite certain that we don't agree completely about what being "just Catholic" means, but I'm also quite certain that we don't disagree in any way so big as to make us opponents in any fundamental sense.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I take a slightly more minimal approach. But it is good to remember that we are together on the fundamentals.

Stuff Nick said:

From the "traditionalist" standpoint (hehe), there is a reason why Popes over the last few centuries have (repeatedly) spoken out against the idea of the State taking over Marriage (in order to confine it to the secular realm). The problem is that it strips Marriage of it's Sacramental character and thus cuts off it's ultimate ends, which are supernatural (Mat 22:30).

Interesting.

A secular marriage becomes ordered towards what currently benefits society, with it's ends limited only to the present - which is likewise "guided" by the ever changing wind of "popular opinion."

This would seem to flow logically.

But it seems like some of the societal ends do still matter, or at least, that the stability is--even if it is only an "in the meantime" solution--better than instability.

This is one of the core reasons why separation of Church and State is impossible for the Christian, and without this foundation any dialogue with "others" (e.g. feminists, Protestants, "Republican Party Catholics") is ultimately futile. Without that foundation, you're conceding 'home field advantage' to the lost, confused, or even downright evil 'opponent' - and at that point it's an up-hill and no-win game for you.

I am not at all married to our Constitution; I should much rather see a state reordered to human dignity and the law of God. However, it seems rather pessimistic to assume it is simply "an up-hill and no-win game" to venture out of one's "home field." Certainly it makes things more difficult, but I think the consistency of Catholic moral philosophy can serve as a witness even when we're not in the home-field, if we really say not only that "I agree with you about XYZ," but also "You're wrong about ABC, because really, this is the way things should be." (ABC doesn't mean artificial birth control here, but it could!) Of course, for this witness to really work, we've got to be living as a people with hope in the Resurrection, and living the philosophy we preach.

When the ultimate end is to assist their partner in attaining Heaven, things such as rape, grey area, even consent, 'drop out' of the equation because they inherently oppose that ultimate end. The modern notion of 'consent' is inherently wrong because it is not formed by Charity (Love), because it is based on selfishly consenting only when the person consenting sees them self in a position to gain ("take") and not as an unselfish fulfillment of duty. Consent formed by Charity is only possible in the Sacramental context, but at that point it resembles nothing of what the secular reader can make sense of.

There is truth to many of the nuances Dan is speaking of, but they need to be re-framed into the Christian framework and not left 'hanging' as if applicable to the secular view of marriage.

Yes. At the same time, being able to speak Catholic truth into situations that aren't immediately Catholic, and in a way which encourages conversion, would be a useful endeavor if we can manage it.

Stuff Shawn said:

As the only female commentor as of this moment, I will say that intimacy (which, from my angle, is the point of relationship in general, and marriage specifically) is certainly not limited to sex/intercourse (nor is intercourse a requirement for intimacy). Arrogance and entitlement are intimacy killers. Consent and desire will both be augmented by a move toward intimacy, which is fed by respect, self-sacrifice, and having your beloved's back...emotionally/physically/spiritually.

You, being a non-Catholic, are in an intellectual sense freer than I am to take union as being the end of marriage. I, being Catholic, am free to take it as being an end of marriage. I do however think intimacy is bad phraseology for anything that is supposed to be "the point" of marriage specifically. I assume when you say intimacy you mean intimacy that is found in a sense of marital union--otherwise, if you just wanted intimacy, why wouldn't you just go monastic? A faith community is plenty intimate. Something about marital intimacy must be different. So if you meant to say that intimacy itself was the point of marriage specifically, I would have to say I think you're wrong on that point.

From where I'm sitting, many of the less savory components of "feminism" are essentially self-defense or at worst reactionary.

To be honest, most of the things I dislike most aren't even the reactionary things, they're the things that comes from a worldview that's very much outside of Christianity.

The sad part is that women felt the only way to be as valuable as a man was to be like a man. This should make us all sad..."femininity" was sacrificed on the alter of not being second class. Tragic.

To a degree, I agree. I don't think most women have actually made that switch in its entirety (or if they have, our culture is doing a poor job of showing us this shift.)

Feminism has had some unfortunate fall out, but it was necessitated by oppression (generally at the hands of men, often those who used religion and "headship" as a cheap crutch).

From where I'm standing, with my admittedly naive readings of Paul, it looks like headship exists, and that it does seem to be the husband's. That seems to be a reality that we've all got to deal with if we're seeking to be historically Biblical Christians. The question is what it means. I lean more complementarian on that than you do, but I have no fully formed opinion on it except that it definitely includes a strong sacrificial component.

To sum up my thoughts, I'm tickled pink (yes, it's a girlie color, and I LIKE it!) to hear men (primarily, so far) having this conversation. It gives me hope for a better future, where we all embrace the unique ways we were designed.

I suppose my big question would be whether a belief in uniqueness of the sexes puts any serious limitation on straight-up egalitarianism.

In general, some of the assertions you made in comments about abortion and dogma are not necessarily Catholic positions; I feel that at least for the present conversation I've addressed those sufficiently here.

Some Questions/Comments on that First YMY Post

I'd said some thing about my initial impressions of the book Yes Means Yes over in this here post.

In the comments below my friend Eric had left some interestings which I felt merited a post in response. If anyone else wants to chime in they may feel free to do so either in the original thread, or here. Eric's comments will be in bold, my responses will be in normal text.

Full disclosure, I feel that I owe some of my thought to correspondence with the friend who lent me YMY, much to correspondence with other people and Eric (outside of the comment I am responding to), and a bit to correspondence with the Catholic philosopher Alexander Pruss.

The logic of "consentual sex" is in no way something which can be applied to consenting to marriage.

I am not sure what you mean--do you mean we can't apply it to each act within marriage, or that we can't apply it to the consent one gives to be married in the first place? I disagree either way--a consent, an "I will," is important. Coercion, even if it was not forceful, would certainly cheapen the strength of that will, if not pervert it. "I do" does not indicate an "I will" for all future instances; the question is when in the future "I won't" is acceptable. I don't think you're advocating coercion or force, but certainly within the context of a relationship built on Love, neither ought to be allowed. And if a construction of consent helps to enforce that ban, I'm all for it.

First of all, consenting to marriage is about a union of lives. While modern Christians seem to obsess over the sexual ethics, with some theology of the body people going so far as to suggest that sex is the ultimate realization of the union of marriage, really it's not the main point.

With few exceptions (Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!) it's a pretty clear corollary of the Genesis definition of marriage, which seems to indicate a man and a woman becoming one flesh. A union of lives is certainly present but (again, rare exceptions) I'm not sure how that can not include the physical. I don't necessarily think you're trying to exclude the physical, but in terms of physical realizations, intercourse, aside from a man actually and literally laying down his life for his wife, does seem like it's pretty up there. There are of course other things.

Obsessing over sexual ethics obscures the reality of marriage, and applying the logic of "consentual sex" analogously to marriage adds fuel to the fire.

It's already been obscured. Everyone from Puritans and prudes to libertines and liberals have obscured it. Any husband who's ever beaten his wife or molested his children has obscured it. What the Catholic ethics people are attempting to do might add fuel to the fire. I don't care if it does. But if so their fire will be a cleansing fire, not a further obscurantist fire. I think the caution you've suggested already about not making sex the ultimate goal of marriage is a good one, especially given the counterexamples from the Church's Tradition. But for better or for worse, we live in a world where marriage has been obscured. If everything were clear, if everyone acted in the interest of Love, I think we could talk about an absorption of consent by Love in a similar vein to Wojtyla's talk of absorption of shame by Love--it's not that those things disappear or are not necessary, but that for a given relationship they no longer need to be discussed, at least not so directly, because both persons, acting in the interest of Love, will automatically practice them. If you in your marriage have reached that point, then I applaud that. Do I think some of the feminist movement and sexual ethicists have potential to do more damage in that area of obscuring, or even that they have? Yeah, but good Christian men who go home and do un-Christian things to their households have helped to create the reality that everyone has to wrestle with, which is that we're not yet at a point where Love can really be said to be absorbing anything.

Aside from the fact that agreeing to marriage is not the same thing as agreeing to use each other for pleasure, it should also be remembered that a married couple owes each other what's called the "marriage debt" which I'm sure would be horrifying to those who believe in "consentual sex" (though it should be remembered that men owe it to women as much as women to men).

I don't particularly like to use the language of debt with respect to sexuality. I do of course endorse the language of mutual ownership, but the fact remains the Love does not force. Paul's admonition on the subject--"do not deprive each other except by mutual consent for prayer and fasting" (not verbatim) seems to indicate that if there is that ideal, that if they're not setting aside a time for prayer and fasting, the marriage should indeed have a sex life. If a marriage has none, from a Catholic perspective, something is wrong. I agree; in that case something would be at the least seriously wrong. However, I don't think this justifies the use of coercion

You quote Cho as saying she has several times said yes to sex she actually didn't want to have.

For the record, I don't think that anyone, including Cho, really considers those instances of rape. When I read her testimony, I considered them to be instances of having sex for reasons that were at least less than ideal, if not actually wrong (either on her part and/or someone else's), and would have been less than ideal even if she'd been married.

Maybe by developing a more rigorous language of consent this could be somewhat limited, but if people are being asked to make this sort of decision on the spot the grey area is never going to go away.

A small emotional gray area (perhaps a small doubt of whether one wants to) can be taken along with an explicit willing for something to happen, as safely constituting consent in my book. The larger gray area is if coercion--verbal or alcoholic--is in any way present. So yeah, I'll agree that a small emotional gray is likely to be eliminated.

In fact, it is the sexual revolution that has created this grey area. When sex is restricted to marriage, there is no such "did she really want it... really?" type grey area.

I think we could easily imagine a scenario like Cho's more violent experience happening in a marital context. Doesn't mean it necessarily happens often, but it definitely doesn't close the question of whether a wife perpetually wants it, or perpetually wills it. It just might mean she's decided, oddly enough, to will something else, because it's less effort than going through with the deeper will, which is just "not tonight." And I think we could pretty easily imagine such a scenario having happened anytime in the middle ages just like it might happen today.

This will not go away unless sex outside of marriage on the whole is condemned. "Consentual sex" cannot solve this problem.

Agreed! But it's a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition. And in the meantime, until we have a cultural conversion with respect to sexuality, we're going to want to be able, if we can, to speak as Christians to less-than-Christian conditions. I definitely agree that until everyone is really asking themselves what Love requires--and until everyone has the proper understanding of what, at its basic level, that Love is--our problems, our sad necessity to even talk about what consent means (again, recall, in an ideal world, we wouldn't need to construct a meaning for it, because said need would be absorbed by person who relate to each other in Love)...Until we convert, until we are in a sort of societal sense, resurrected, it's not going to go away. I do condemn sex outside of marriage. But that doesn't mean I desire to see that sin compounded by other sins which are either qualitatively or quantitatively worse. It would be great if the old culture were be baptized and transformed into the new creation. But that's going to take time, and in the meantime, that old culture is going to need bandages.

It is in fact feminism and the sexual revolution which have in the first place made "date rape" and other such difficult middle grounds between consent and violent rape possible,

Great, but feminism didn't do that on its own. Coercion and un-Loving pressure are middle grounds that, while they don't necessarily constitute rape, were definitely there before. The question of date rape is a slightly different one to me, but I'm willing to bet that a number of other movements besides Feminism helped make it happen. Aside from whatever faulty teaching members of the Church--as opposed to the Church's teaching office--may have passed down, again we have the Puritans who, rightly or wrongly, are known for having overestimated the value of sexual shame, and the Libertines who are known for having done pretty much the opposite. I don't necessarily discount the idea that the feminist movement may have exacerbated some of the problems of society, or that said problems include complications relating to our idea of consent, of what it means to 'will' a sex act to happen.

and they will only go away when we reject feminism and the sexual revolution.

I am not ready to agree to this for all definitions of 'feminism,' but for all historically reasonable (that is, not deliberately redeemed by some Christian youth movement) meanings of 'sexual revolution' I would call this a necessary but not sufficient condition. We must invite God, to paraphrase an older Graham Kendrick tune: "Search [us], try [us], consume all our darkness." It's possible that somewhere along the line the Christian tradition began contributing to the confusion; certainly many of us in action, even if not in theory. That's part of the reason I think theory is important, why it's important to build a model of human sexuality that cautions us against coercion, even if it means re-phrasing (not re-interpreting, or mis-construing) our old ideas about what the Pauline injunction to regular physical unity actually means. I prefer to use less abusable language, language prone to--if anything--persuasion as opposed to coercion. I suspect the exact boundaries and lines that each couple must adhere to in order to respond to Love's demands will vary by the context of relationship, but as a general guideline I am more comfortable with the language of "should" than with the language of debt, and it is my belief that while either might be strictly compatible, one is much more likely to lead to bad practice--to moral untruth--than the other. I don't dispute that many couples take the phrasing of 'marriage debt' seriously and interpret it in a way which is not, in the context of their relationship, subject to abuse. And even a "should"--even a "debt," for that matter, has limits on proper method. At the risk of being overly subjective, something about a husband or a wife using the notion of a "debt" (or even a "should," but "should" seems less subject to this problem) doesn't strike me as a very resurrected situation for a marriage to be in. Neither does the notion of a celibate marriage, with few exceptions. It seems like the "should" might be more properly applied to what the two persons will in the first place, so that their wills in the matter move further and further in line with one another and so that neither ever tries--at least not badgeringly--to convince the other on the matter.* Let me be clear: I don't want to or will to excise the Pauline injunction from the Tradition. It can't be done. But I do not consider myself or any other Christian to be bound to the phrasing of "marriage debt," particularly, but not exclusively, due to the baggage it carries today and the abuse it has had over the years as a tool for abuse.

If we are Catholic, why should we draw or understanding of the proper ordering of gender within society from a bunch of largely atheist revolutionaries who have sought to destroy the norms of marriage, when the saints have already taught on the subject?

I'm not sure who precisely you're concerned about. My concern is to figure out where this movement might highlight moral truths that aren't--for whatever reason--talked about as much within the church. I have no desire to rewrite our narratives to match their goals. I do have a desire to see what the truth is in their results, and allow that truth to give further nuance to how I as a Christian construct my response to things, in particular my response to sexuality. But I guarantee you, I have no interest in rewriting the essential Christian narrative of sexuality and/or gender to include perspectives which aren't Christian. I have an interest in moral truth, no matter what its immediate source, and in seeing what the interaction is between that Truth, and our starting points. I have no interest in drawing my ultimate understanding of those things from anything other than an understanding of ourselves as creatures of God in light of the Resurrection.

And do the Saints discuss the subject of marital rape? Of childhood abuse? If so, those aren't exactly the popular or discussed passages. And if nobody's really putting it out there that the Saints have talked about this, and nobody's talking about what they've said, then (as far as me hearing what they've said goes) it doesn't do much to just say "the Saints have talked about this." This isn't just about gender and the basic meanings and contemplations of humans as sexual beings who are creatures of God. This is about how, building on that understanding, our specific conceptualizations of what a right relationship looks like influences our understanding of everything else. I guarantee you, in my mind, the feminist movement comes out substantially less than Good in the eyes of God. But that doesn't mean they haven't walked in shoes we've never walked in (female shoes, to start with) or experienced things we've never experienced (speaking only for myself without intending to imply anything about anyone else who gets involved in this conversation, I have never been abused)...and it doesn't mean--that feminists--even if they may have furthered the obfuscation of sexuality--have nothing valuable to say that can help us get out of the hole of obfuscation of sex that we've gotten into. Just like everyone else has nuances to contribute. Ultimately I do believe the constructions lending themselves most to proper service of Truth will come from the Catholic fold, and that the proper starting points are parts of the Catholic Truth that Christ preached and left to the early Church. That, by the way, goes for every area of life, including but not limited to human sexuality.

I see no reason, unless we are trying to impress the world by saying "don't worry, I'm not so crazy. I can be a feminist too." But why should we be trying to impress the world?

Hopefully, if we're trying to impress the world at all, it's by letting our light shine before it, so that it might see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven. Don't get me wrong; I have problems with trying to be agreeable, and that's personal stuff that I need to work on for the sake of my relationship with God. It goes, by the way, with whoever I'm talking with, "conservative" or "liberal." But allow me to be very clear about this, lest anyone think otherwise:

I would gladly cast off any label other than Christian, and even that, if I felt it stood in the way of my commitment to Christ and to the Truth.

That said, nobody has yet applied the feminist label to me, and they're not likely to do so. I confess to erring on the side of dialog here (as I usually do), if I am indeed erring. Erring on the other side, however, might result in ignoring legitimate concerns of their movement, and that won't profit myself, the Church, or Christ at all, however, and it might do just the opposite; it might give credence to the view that Christianity that doesn't listen to those who are downtrodden and left-out. Some people are going to view us that way anyway, and that's their problem. But I'm going to do whatever is in my power to strip them of the stupid excuses they feel that 'religion' has given the to ignore it. Sometimes that duty will require me to speak up and correct, to declare what I believe is the wrongness of the world. Sometimes that duty requires me to listen.

My explicit statement in this matter of modern feminist thought, and in all others, is to claim a Catholic--not pre, post or simply modern, not Thomist or personalist, or anything else--Catholicism, in which I am hungry for the Eucharist, for Love, and for Truth and Justice, and with that as my banner and guide, spiritual home and philosophical home-base, to brave the postmodern wilderness and--if God can make me holy enough--help to convert that wilderness into something that looks more like the Kingdom of God.

* I see nothing prima facie wrong with the idea of persuasion on the part of either partner. The exact question of where coercion comes in is a good one, and I'm not sure a single line can be drawn that will be applicable to every individual marriage, because--as with many things--even the two persons and who they are will create a different context of relationship.

Yes Means Yes: Initial Impressions

Yes Means Yes is a book of essays written by feminists which attempts to provide a remedy to some of the underlying assumptions and models of sexuality and persons that can provide cultural sanction for the practice of rape, especially in the united states. The essays aren't necessarily confined strictly to that objective, but everything discussed is at least of tangential relevance to that critique. All citations here are from the 2008 edition (for a visual description, the one with the red, black and yellow cover,) and will be given in the format of ("Essay," Section writer, page number), thereafter (Last name, page number).

This is the first of what will hopefully be many blog posts in which I am giving my theological and personal reactions, from where I come from as a Christian, to the issues and ideas raised by this book. This post just has some initial impressions.

Hopefully I can present a charitable enough picture of what this book has to say that whoever reads this will be able to make a good decision about whether or not to read it for yourselves. I don't necessarily recommend that every Christian I know read this book; many conservatives and even a few liberals would term it crass and crude in places, and rightly so; so I urge persons who are contemplating reading this book and think they might be offended to ask themselves first if being offended will help them grow, or just make them miss the point. And, among many other things, the book is quite obviously about sex. So use your discernment there.

That said, there's a lot of stuff I like in what I've read so far. Now I definitely don't share my religious framework with a lot of these writers, and (as a consequence) there are many things in the book that are problematic from a Catholic perspective. But many of the critiques of the culture, at their core, ring true, and (when I think about them) strike me as stupid just like they strike the secular feminist movement. One thing, right off, just in case there's any misconception at all: I do not believe these women are man-haters, and neither should you. They are not. However, I believe that a number of the assumptions that they make and a few of the resulting assertions are problematic from a Christian and, especially, Catholic perspective.

So I'm going to start with my worst initial impression, then move on to the good ones, which have arisen from the book as well as from discussions with the friend who lent it to me.

The idea contained in the first proper essay gave me my worst impression of the book. It was the idea that "an improved response to rape requires a broad-based approach, and involves challenging the entire right-wing agenda: the wars on sex, on women's bodies, on the poor, on people of color." ("Offensive Feminism," Jill Filipovic, 25) The part of that sentence I object to is probably obvious. I think it's safely said that at the least the "[war] on women's bodies" includes attempts to restrict access to abortion; I'm not sure what exactly these people would think of people like me who willingly converted to a religious perspective which, to some degree, teaches activism not just against abortion but also contraception. Now my friend has pointed out that the emphasis on autonomy signified in this passage can be limited by a religious perspective. I believe this; my issue with Filipovic's assertion stands. I realize that my religious perspective means that, for the movement which spawned this book, whatever response I make is likely to be a lower and less-improved response.

There's one other big impression that I had reading this which should be mentioned, because it's going to show up again. Earlier in her opening essay, Filipovic sates that "feminism and anti-rape activism challenge the dominant narrative that women's bodies aren't their own, they insist that sex is about consent and enjoyment, not violence and harm, and they attack a power structure that sees women as victims and men as predators" (Filipovic, 20). I'll sign my name to this sentence, depending on how we interpret that first "and". Do we mean activism that is feminist and anti-rape, or just activism that is either feminist or anti-rape? I kind of hope she means and, not or. If she means or, Christian challenges to rape must by definition be excluded from anti-rape activism on the basis of belief in a Creatorship of God which extends to ownership (even if persons also own themselves), to say nothing of what Christianity teaches about the point of sex.

Let's assume I can sign my name to that sentence, though, and move on to the deeper issue brought up, which is a dichotomy that Filipovic makes between sex being "about consent and enjoyment, not violence and harm." No matter what the secular feminist response to sex is, the Christian response can't be either of those. Obviously we can't seriously advocate, as Christians, a sexual model that promotes violence and harm. But we also can't speak about it just as a thing about consent and enjoyment. For the Christian tradition consent is a necessary condition for the morality of such an act, but it is not sufficient. Enjoyment certainly is a good bonus of sex, but it's not the point; in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Protestant sexual ethics it is subordinate to unity, in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox ethics subordinate to unity and to procreation. Some of the older (and more disgustingly spread, even if somehow not disgusting) models of sex have massive potential to aid and abet violence and harm that can be done to women. So what model should we be working for in Christian theology?

But let's get back to the consent piece, because it brings me to the first thing I really like and one of the big themes I've come to embrace from this movement.

The introduction to the book is a testimonial of a woman (comedian Margaret Cho) whose first time having sex was with a man who didn't quite get a no from her. But he didn't get a yes, either. Cho's description of the event should appall we who call ourselves Christians: "Before I knew it, he was on top of me. Then he was inside me. No ceremony, no foreplay, no warning, no consent. It never came up" ("Foreword," Margaret Cho, 2). Cho goes on to describe the various times and reasons that she has had "sex I have said yes to, and sometimes even initiated--that I didn't want to have" (Cho, 3).

As a key part of their solution to these problems of female sexuality, rape, and pressures to have sex, the Yes Means Yes movement has, appropriately enough, suggested that "if we established a model of enthusiastic consent instead of just 'no means no,' it would be a lot harder for men to get away with rape. It would be a lot harder to argue that there's a 'gray area'" (Filipovic, 21). This is the idea that I'm pretty enthused about, the idea of establishing a model of consent that is more active than passive.


There are a host of other little observations that are made in this book that I agree with. One essay, "An Immodest Proposal," asks the question of what the world would look like if women took more initiative in a sexual sense. Obviously my stipulations about the proper and moral context of this initiative differ from that of secular feminism, but within a marital framework, if we truly consider the husband and wife equal in dignity, regardless of whether we're complementarians or egalitarians, is there any good reason not to treat the two as having an equal weight not only in consenting to their bodily union, which the serious thinkers on the subject in the Christian tradition has already taken seriously, but also in initiating it, in asking for that special bodily intimacy? (If anyone thinks they have one, they're free to tell me. I'll respond as best as I can.) Another essay, entitled "Beyond Yes or No," talks about an improvement of communication between partners about what they do and don't like and enjoy as far as sex goes. Again, I have reservations with endorsing the same contexts for such things as the author of that essay, and I definitely don't endorse everything that they do as legitimate sexual practice, consent or no consent. But, in such a degree as a given practice is actually in-line with our dignity as persons and Divine intentions for sexuality, I don't see anything wrong with a husband and wife actually discussing what they like and don't like. Even the most conservative Christians shouldn't balk at this--Karol Wojtyla devoted the entire last chapter of Love and Responsibility to biological discussion and talked of the desire to satisfy the other person in terms of pleasure--not as a replacement of unity, but as an outcome desired by Love in a marital context.


Those are a lot of initial impressions, I know. I hope to continue posting these things; in the future they're going to be on an essay-by-essay basis. Look for more on the themes of the Christian response to sexuality, the 'commodity' model of sexuality that the feminist movement much despises (and with good reason), and places where I think Christianity plays nice--or doesn't--with secular feminism. Pray for me in this endeavor!

[This post has been edited to fix a horrific typo I noticed just now, after several years.]

An Unanswerable Question about Waiting Till Marriage

Is sex better if you wait 'till you're married?

My intuition says "no, at least not necessarily." And I've heard assertions of 'yes' and of 'no'--a little of both have come from Christians. But nobody really has the ability to say yes or no, because nobody is really capable of losing their virginity twice. Nobody has the capability of trying married sex both (a) having had sex before, and (b) not having had sex before. It's actually logically impossible to pull off.

A close second, hypothetically, would be this:
(1) Get some consenting volunteers to run an experiment.
(2) Have a way of inducing amnesia which is guaranteed to extend to past sexual experiences.
(3) Have lost whatever part of your conscience it is that would have prevented you from carrying out this experiment.

Now in seriousness, this question is, of course, largely irrelevant for Christians who take it seriously to be a command to wait--who cares if it's better or even worse in terms of pleasure, if it is commanded? But I still found it kind of a funny little thing that despite the bold assertions of yes and no, it is practically impossible to get a reliable answer.

Sacred Laws in a Secular World

While I'm on a roll tonight, I figured I would bring up another sore point that has been on my mind recently. I think that most Christians have this view of law and society that doesn't really work. A very notable case to me is the idea of pornography being legal.
This was brought up to me by a friend--he said that he was in church, and the pastor said he wished that pornography was illegal. My friend does not use pornography, but he told me that he is glad pornography is not illegal because it reflects the citizens having rights to free speech.
Where does a Christian realistically draw the line between trying to make laws that fit their desired moral structure and trying to make laws that really represent the opinion and the desires of the populace? It's easy to argue that fornication is not the best idea ever. However, is it right to stop members of society from fornicating if they don't prescribe to the same world view as I do?
Let's move into two larger issues here. Abortion is a huge topic today. Most Christians I know would agree with me: I hate it. It diminishes the value of birth, the value of the human construction, the sacred protection of a baby within the womb, and a lot of other things. But as we know, not enough people in this country have a problem with it for us to make it illegal. I have a huge issue with abortion because it also involves murder, so that makes this particular topic a little bit more straightforward for me.
Here's the second larger issue: gay marriage. I don't think it's right, but I am also, for the sake of society, willing to accept the possibility of it becoming legal. I have a couple of gay friends, and I love them--but I would never wish that they would get married. I feel that strongly about it. However, if I were in the position to pass law regarding it, I would probably end up making it legal because that is what represents the desires of the populace best.
It seems like as Christians, we have a couple of hard things to remember when it comes to our country. First off, it's not my country, nor is it your country, nor is it the gay couple's country, nor is it anyone else's country. It is, collectively, OUR country. That means that our own impressions of morality and ethics (which, through the Word, are often correct) cannot be forced upon members of society just because we think it's better for them. That sort of law only creates division, hatred, and more lawbreakers.
In addition, it means that if we want to actually do something about the country we share, we can't simply go around trying to get laws passed. It's worthless. You have to change the minds of the people using love and truth, hand-in-hand. It's a lot less simple, but it's the only way I could see going about it.

Dignified

I think many of us in the Christian tradition have some working idea of what human dignity is. All of creation, humanity in a sense qualitatively different from the rest, is stamped with the imago dei, or the image of God. Thus each creature of God has intrinsic worth, and, because humanity bears the image of God in a unique way (perhaps more special for the Incarnation) each individual human life is treated as having that same human dignity. This is a fine notion of what dignity means.

But there is another notion of dignity that needs to die.

I mean this strange dignity that means people looking dignified, or looking proper. Somehow we wound up on this planet with two things: Very physical and animal characteristics, and souls that yearn for God. We are spiritual beings, but also material beings, and so we will, at some point, do some material things. And there's this weird idea that we can look dignified while we do it. Think about when people are told to be proper.

Take eating. Who really looks dignified eating? We can chew our food with our mouths closed, but we are chewing. We are still material things devouring other material things. And don't even try to think about how that food gets processed. I was no biology major, but it's not really a dignified process, for the food or for our bodies, wonderful machines they are.

Following that, is there really a dignified way to use the bathroom? I'm certain some people have tried using the bathroom in a dignified way, and I'm nearly as certain that all of those people failed. And-—even in the context of fully Christian marriage—-is there really anything dignified about sex? It's a union, sure, but it's an animal union as well as a God-ordered one. It can't possibly look dignified to anyone. What about death? Sure, we see pristine looking and well-preserved loved ones at casket viewings. But, to quote a one-time character from an episode of Samurai Champloo, "Death leaves no beautiful corpses." Death of course can leave corpses that have some beauty, but the same corpses serve as reminders, the nearly certain fact that we will all die, and that the person who was there has passed on. Neither the act of dying, nor the earthly remains it leaves behind, are dignified-looking things.

The pattern seems to be that all we're really doing is covering up the 'undignified' part. But by design or due to the intrusion of sin, any mere attempt at looking dignified is ultimately just an attempt to dress up us soulful animals so that we look less ridiculous than we are.

Peter Kreeft, in his Fundamentals of the Faith (1988 edition, p.67) and on this webpage, states that:

Death is a crass, crude, vulgar, and materialistic problem. It needs a crass, crude, vulgar, and materialistic solution, like the resurrection of the body. What set the ancient world on fire was not faith in faith, a psychology, a philosophy, or an ethic, but the astonishing news that God became man, died, and rose from death to save us from sin and death.

The Word of God stepped down to the level of the strange combination of soul and animal. He embraced all the indignities that come with being human. Historically Biblical Christian tradition teaches that this did not include sex, but the fact of eating and using a bathroom should be enough, to say nothing of the Crucifixion. There's nothing that looks dignified about Crucifixion. Actually, forget the Crucifixion--what's so dignified about the Resurrection? Even if the Risen Christ was literally aglow, Christ still had the holes in his hands. Would that really be an appropriate visual at the dinner table? I doubt it.

So if even God gave up looking dignified (and sometime during the Passion, this definitely happened) to help rescue and redeem us from Death, it seems like the societal notion of looking dignified, as a general principle, has no real hold on us. But what does?

Returning to what I said before:

Because humanity bears the image of God in a unique way (perhaps made even more special by the Incarnation?) each individual human life is treated as having that same human dignity.

What if we tried on the basis of our worth as creatures of God to set our standards for what actions should be hidden and which would not? Certainly this might make things a little messier, introduce a little bit more context, and force us to judge on more than mere appearances. On the other hand, if we start with the notion of each individual human life--that strange unique mixture of soul and animal, and consider the implications of its dignity and worth for how it ought to live, and how it ought to be treated, we might just start to get a picture of how to put to rest all unnecessary stifling of laughter, put in proportion all table manners, and excercise reverence for God and not sanctimony. If all we do is try to hide our indignities, we'll never be dignified. If we start by realizing our status as creatures of God, we actually have a shot.

In the Meantime

These are some thoughts that started about a week ago when a TV show I was watching reminded me I was single. That was not a good day.

I don't know what my vocation is. Either it's marriage or it's some sort of consecrated single life (Holy Orders in that case, probably.) Anyway, I realized that day that I wasn't happy being single. I'm not sure why that is. Could be because I'm called to marriage, or it could be that I'm so afraid of turning into this guy* that I can't stop watching myself whenever I make a new friend of the female persuasion. Maybe I'm called to the Priesthood, but I'm really in denial (some of my reasoning for discerning away from the clerical state doesn't quite seem to hold up, to me.) Some days (not today especially) it's enough to make me want God to just slam one door shut, and open the other one wide. Just some kind of obvious sign. That'd be great.

Sometime, when I find and fulfill my vocation, I have a feeling that dealing with the fact of sexuality is going to get a lot easier. Because then I'll have a state I can accept, and live with; no more nebulous single-hood.

It'll come in God's time. In the meantime, please pray that I would be less neurotic when I meet women, and know when to relax and when to be vigilant. (Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility was a huge help in the way of a philosophical framework for living; book recommendations on the subject are good if you can think of any.) But if nothing else, prayer for discernment--in the immediate and in the vocational sense.

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* If this is your first XKCD comic, you might not want to browse the site. Sometimes it's a little less spiritual and a lot more offensive than that one. But that comic itself should be fine.

My Notes and Money-Quotes from Love and Responsibility

My notes and quotations as found in my little notebook, amended with page numbers where possible, and amended to include the most awesome quotation in the book. Page numbers are for the Ignatius edition which can be found here on Google Books.

TYPES OF LOVE (Romantic Context)

Love as Attraction

amor complacentia: "Attraction is of the essence of love and in some sense is indeed love, although love is not merely attraction." [page 76]

Love as Desire

amor concupiscentia: love as desire "You are a good for me", vs. [mere] desire (sensual) which can lead to use of the person to fill a lack [page 81]

Love as Goodwill

amor benevolentia[e]: desire for the greatest good for the person [page 83]

reciprocity: love is a "between" [page 85]

[QUOTATIONS FROM THE REST OF THE BOOK]

The Person and Love: The Education of Love

"There is no need to be dismayed if love sometimes follows tortuous ways. Grace has the power to make straight the paths of human love." [page 140]

The Pers[on and] Chastity: [The]Struct[ure] of Sin

"If I believe that A is good, and I do A, I act well even if A is really bad." [page 163]

"'Authenticity' of feeling is quite often inimical to truth in behavio[u]r." [page 163]

"...to which true love ought to be particularly attractive, because it creates a real opportunity for the will to immerse itself in the good." [page 166]

The Pers[on and] Chastity: [The] True Meaning of Chastity

"True chastity does not lead to disdain for the body or to disparagement of matrimony and the sexual life." [page 171]

The Pers[on and] Chastity: Shamelessness

"Man, alas, is not such a perfect being that the sight of the body of another person, especially a person of the other sex, can arouse in him merely a disinterested liking which develops into an innocent affection." [page 190]

The Pers[on and] Chastity: Self Control and Objectivization

"Above all, continence cannot be an end in itself." [page 197, 'above all' didn't appear in original notes.]

The Pers[on and] Chastity: Tenderness and Sensuality

"Every human being is a limited good, and for that reason capable of disinterestedness only within limits." [page 203]

Justice Towards the Creator: Vocation

[Brackets within brackets within quotes are things I've added to the quotations in this blog post to clarify how I read them at the time.]

"This attitude is primarily a function of the person: [...[whether they are]] married, celibate, or even virgin [...[is]] of secondary importance." [page 258]

Please feel free to react to these quotations if you please.

Inadvertently Insulting Group Names

Has anyone ever run across a title for an organization or periodical that makes them slightly uncomfortable, or puts them off a little bit?

I've run across not a few groups or periodicals of this kind in the last lifetime, all of which fall under the general heading of the small-c church, and their names all bug me. I can easily see interpretations of them that aren't actually insulting, but I get the feeling that in striving to emphasize what they believe to be their missions, I think that these entities might be more polarizing of their theological not-totally-in-agreement comrades than they want to be.

The List

1. Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, which is a more liberal Catholic organization that focuses on justice and sometimes comes under fire for not talking enough about abortion. But are non-member Catholics not seeking the common good, or have they just not taken that crucial extra step of putting themselves in alliance with CACG.

2. Priests for Life, an organization of Catholic priests dedicated to a pro-life ethos. But are non-member priests, then, the 'Priests for Choice,' or 'Priests Indifferent to Life'?

3. Relevant magazine, which is some mixture of hip non-denominational Christianity and the emerging church, with some good pop culture satire. But are those people irrelevant who don't buy into the seeker-sensitive movement to a substantial degree?

4. The Remnant magazine, which is an orthodox Traditionalist-movement paper in Catholicism. The big question here is "the remnant of what?"

5. Focus on the Family. Is my vision of the family blurred if I disagree with, say, Dr. Dobson's views on corporal punishment?

Please feel free to chime in if you can think of other organizations that have interesting names like this. Also, if you have a decent way of interpreting the group's name charitably, please tell me.

Also, as I said, I am simply raising questions about how we name our groups. I realize that in varying degree each of these has a fairly obvious solution to how its name is to be interpreted, that doesn't do violence to charity by assuming ill-will or a grudge towards those who choose not to join the group or adhere to the ideals of the publication. But in trying to express what we do emphasize do we wind up denigrating people who aren't particularly wrong, but just don't emphasize the same thing as us. All of that said, if you have some further insight on what an organization might've been thinking in giving its name, or another organization's name that you don't see on the list, please do share! I realize I'm poking some fun at these names in even including them on such a list, and there's a point to that, which is to say that maybe we should be more careful in the implications of how we label ourselves. But please avoid needless degradation of the missions of these organizations: Every one of them has meaningful truths to emphasize to the church and the Church, and to simply shut them down is to ignore problems their emphases might point to in our own theological constructs, spiritual practices and personal lives.

Some Stuff on a Couple of Marian Dogmas

So Austin and I had another big huge honkin' conversation with Austin last night. We've basically agreed that it's post-worthy. I should warn, it's long, but lots of its lines aren't full so it'll probably read faster than it seems. It's worth noting that Austin and I have been talking theology for a long time, so we don't always set our reverence-filters to max, even when we're talking about Marian dogmas.

Dan: ok

TBH i'm not the best person to ask about immaculate conception and perpetual virginity

Austin: yeah

i do understand that

Dan: the two doctrines you seem mainly to take issue with, if i'm reading you right

Austin: well now

Dan: we've talked about theotokos

Austin: immaculate conception.... i forgot what that specifically means

please re-define it

Dan: it means being born w/o original sin

Austin: oh, Christ being born w/o?

Dan: nope

that's a Marian one

obviously it also applies to Christ, but that's because he's God and is like us in all things except sin

Austin: so the idea is that mary was immaculate?

Dan: i dunno

i think the main idea is

immaculate vessel for the Son of God

Austin: ah

i thought that the sin was through adam's descendants

Dan: in vulgar terms, since her belly is the holy of holies...

and i was applying that one to Immaculate Conception...but basically, since she's carrying the son of God, the basic rationale is that she should also be without sin, OSLT. there might also be something there in terms of how Jesus received a human nature

i've no idea if that made any sense at all

Austin: i am thinking about it a bit

it just seems like the concept of an immaculate mary is not something that is based on any scripture but is a theological construct based on the necessity for it, because of the way that the theology was made in the first place

Dan: what, what with the Trinity and the Incarnation, etc.?

Austin: no, i mean those make sense

they are theological constructs out of necessity because we see them in the scripture

Dan: okay

Austin: but i don't necessarily see why God cannot be conceived in a sinful womb

especially with the HS at work

Dan: hmm

hmm

Austin: i mean, if there was a principle that led me to believe that

i could understand how (implicitly) immaculate conception could be constructed

Dan: ok

so what if it were an implication of a scriptural construct like the incarnation?

it seems then that it would be necessary

Austin: yes, indeed

iwould definitely agree with it then.

Dan: yeah

btw, when i was talking about references of Scripture

in the mass

i was including the many implicit references

in addition to the explicit ones, like "Lord, I know am not worthy to receive you, etc."

Austin: ah yes

you know, i really don't have much problem with the mass structure or the things they say even

or the prayers

it's just the theological stuff about mary

like, that SERIOUSLY trips me up

Dan: what about the declarations on free will?

Austin: free will (even with my strong views on it) is still something i'm willing to debate and consider

but i really am not open to the idea of mary being a pure human being

Dan: what's your objection?

like, how does it contradict the Scripture?

(btw, I'm playing dumb a little: I do have my own objections along those lines)

Austin: it mildly contradicts but i would argue that something so foundational should be more based on scripture

(aye, don't worry about it)

there is little mention of Mary outside of the gospels

Dan: this is true

Austin: i can't think of any epistle references to her off-hand

and none of them mention the idea that she was sinless, though the majority of the epistles talk about Christ as being pure and sinless

i just sorta think that if they were writing it, they might throw in a shout-out to Mary, you know

Dan: ...heh

Austin: something like "Jesus, He was pure and sinless, just like His mom"

:\

Dan: maybe

the thing that i'm working on is this greek word that people won't agree on

it's in luke 1:28

the Catholics are the only ones who translate it as "full of grace" but they, or at least their websites, disagree with CARM about what the word is in the greek

and I myself couldn't say b/c from CARM's site it might just be a different way to spell said greek word in english

Austin: which word?

Dan: that's part of the problem i'm not sure

Austin: ah

being from a reformed church

i am inevitably in much agreement with CARM.ORG [Note: The relevant article on that site is “Mary, full of grace, and Luke 1:28. – KK]

Dan: carm's anglicization: kexaritomena

Austin: so it's not a great place for me to check things out

Dan: catholic answers's: kecharitomene [Relevant article on catholic.com: “How to Defend the Immaculate Conception,” probably anything with that title, but Jason Evert if there's more than one. - KK]

you see my problem?

those look JUST similar enough that the people might be seeing the same greek word and writing it different

now it IS quite clear that they're translating it differently

Austin: yeah

Dan: but one or both might be mixed up about what the word actually IS

and that's a problem

Austin: OH

found the word

hang on let me get this copied for you

Dan: link?

yes

Austin: http://gknt.org/cgi-bin/gnt?id=0301 [Note: This link will be important later. - KK.]

scroll down to 28

it's near the halfway point

after a comma

Dan: yeah, that's a bigass greek word

Austin: yes it is sir

i was thinking the exact same thing

Dan: i wonder if, in some comic awesomeness, the apologists are breaking the word down at different places resulting in different roots/conclusions?

Austin: interesting thought

however i wonder what the difference between the latin and this version is

i think that's more to do with it

Dan: well yes, SORT of.

the latin version translates a lot more explicitly as 'full of grace'

the problem with the CARM argument is that it relies on the latin being the source of the confusion without considering the possibility that maybe the latin translation was keeping in mind marian language that had already become part of the church

in which case the early church, if CARM is right, must have been awfully set on contrabiblical teaching

Austin: indeed

when did the marian doctrine emerge, exactly?

in reference to the latin vulgate

Dan: ...well the nature of emergence requires me not to give an exact date

however, w/r/t latin vulgate, at least two dogmas can be seen earlier than the vulgate

these being, IIRC, perpetual virginity and immaculate conception

Austin: i see

Dan: (there's also one that's still got a chance of being dogmatized, but it only shows up in anywhere near full force in st irenaeus among the fathers, IIRC)

Austin: so it is a possibility that the translation was influenced through these dogmas

Dan: yes

but that would also imply that these dogmas were commonly held in the early church

Austin: perpetual virginity really doesn't make sense to me either :\

she got married to a dude and didn't ever sleep with him

Dan: which presents a problem for CARM guys, if they care about being the historical Christian church

is this not possible?

actually, the best argument i've heard for perpetual virginity

Austin: this is VERY possibly

*possible

i've heard it happens a lot in modern marriages

:D

Dan: heh

Austin: i'm just saying that i don't understand why it's held as a dogma

is there some virtue in not having sex?

Dan: there might be

you'd have to ask someone more awesome than i about that

Austin: ah bummer

i must have been mistaken

i thought i was talking to the most awesome one :(

Dan: sorry

Mary's basic question "How can this be if I'm a virgin", doesn't necessarily make sense if we assume virgin simply means "unsexed one"

i mean

i'm sure she was well aware of human biology

so on some level, if she had vowed some sort of virginity, it makes a little more sense

Austin: wait, so you mean that

Dan: i'm not totally convinced by the argument, but it struck me better than most

Austin: it doesn't make sense for her to say, "how can this be, since i've never had sex?" but it DOES make sense for her to say, "how can this be, since I vowed never to have sex?"

Dan: yes, kind of

actually, yeah, that is pretty much the arg

Austin: i do not wish to be unkind

Dan: say it

Austin: that argument [fails very badly]

Dan: not as hard as you think

Austin: well

maybe i'm missing something

but how is vowing not to have sex any different than not having sex

Dan: ...it's not any different

let's take the first part:

''it doesn't make sense for her to say, "how can this be, since i've never had sex?" '

of course that doesn't make sense

Austin: well first

what is she responding to

what exactly does the angel say here

Dan: and that's the issue

okay

on my rereading of luke the argument DOES fly

and the perpetual virginity IS supported

the angel doesn't say HOW she'll conceive

Austin: ok. lay it on me brotha

Dan: UNTIL she mentions her virginity

let's go with assumption A: when Mary said 'virgin' she meant she'd never had sex

under this context

the angel tells her she's going to conceive

that she's GOING to

not that she has

Austin: aye

Dan: he doesn't even give a time frame

and her response is "how can this be if i've never had sex"

even though she is currently bethrothed

Austin: so he says, "in the future you will conceive a child"... i see what you're saying

Dan: BUT

if 'virgin' implies 'i'm not planning on having sex ever'

then it seems more sensible to say 'but angel dude, how can i have a baby without having sex?'

Austin: yeah

dude

all i'm thinking is

Dan: which of course if she were planning on having relations with joseph, would be silly

Austin: joseph signed up for the WRONG marriage here

if mary was a super hot chick

Dan: HEH

Austin: he would totally not dig that

Dan: possibly not

but if an angel came and told YOU to dig it

you might reconsider

Austin: yeah maybe

you have a point

Dan: it is also not impossible for Catholics to believe that Joseph was actually a widower; in fact it's fairly common belief in the tradition

not defined, but common

i hope the argument makes more sense to you NOW though

i thought it was in trouble for a second myself, then i read the angel's initial anunciation more carefully

it also makes more sense to me now why Calvin and Luther held to perp. virginity: they knew their exegesis

Austin: pretty much all the translations here are future tense

so there's a good indication that the greek is future tense

aye. well perpetual virginity could make sense, then. now i understand why it is a plausible dogma

Dan: dangit xeirx, now i convinced MYself basically

even if i didn't convince you

Austin: wait

convinced yourself of perpetual virginity?

honestly dude, don't try it

it's too hard

Dan: ?

hello

Austin: mary's a champ

for sticking with it

Dan: we're already part of a religion that believes in the RESURRECTION

oh

HEH

i thought you were talking about the doctrine

Austin: :D

i know :)

Dan: no, i only intend on that if i discern that i'm not getting married

but i've also discerned that i'm not ever joining the priesthood unless God has a really evil sense of humor

bonus: Catholic answers' analysis of the bigass greek word agrees with the site you sent

Austin: nice

my video card pulled another overheating trick

Dan: insofar as they gave their analysis of the verb as a verb

Austin: so now i am in the cold kitchen :(

Dan: i am sorry :/

Austin: hey, so far this has been a good discussion but i'm really tired

Dan: ok

Austin: and i need to get out of the house as soon as i can tomorrow

because my sister's friend is coming over and she has a wicked crush on me

Dan: i shall ttyl

Austin: i just don't wanna deal with that crap

Dan: HEH

ok

have a good day

and good luck avoiding women as you often have to do

we shall discuss this more later

Austin: can you put our conversation on keyboardtheologians?

Dan: yeah!

actually

i will!

Austin: sweet!

Dan: unless you want the honors

Austin: well as long as you give me credit for a post i don't care who does it

Dan: ok

Austin: it's nice to collaborate and talk about stuff

Dan: yeah

Austin: if this were a work night i would be screwed

Dan: hehe yeah

Austin: no more work nights until i get a job again!

:D

Dan: we might be able to talk more tomorrow though, depending when i'm home

Austin: okay, cool

Dan: have a good one though

Austin: i'll keep my eyes open

you have a good one too, and Gby

Dan: Gby2

Austin: 'night

Anyway, as always, anyone who has further thoughts on the stuff we talked about is welcome to provide them.