I am no apologist for the Church, and I have no problem whatsoever with gay marriage, but I think your crack equating the priest sex abuse scandal with the Church's position on gay marriage is underhanded. As I see it, gay marriage is a contracts issue: two people have entered into a contractual relationship that is sanctioned by an outside authority. That's all any contract really is: as Holmes put it, a contract is an agreement to be sued in the event of breach.

I can see no reason to deny this contractual relationship to anyone-- and I think that there are actually social stability arguments to be made in favor of gay marriage. So yes, as I see it, gay marriage is something that should be recognized by the government. If, however, we are talking about having a particular religion sanction a relationship, well, then we are talking about something else all together.

Religions are entitled to have their beliefs, and their rules, and if one of those rules is that homosexuality is not sanctioned, then you are out of luck if you want that religion to sanction your relationship. Really, beliefs and rules are all religions have, and if they back away from them, they are nothing.

So if you are a woman, and you would like to be a priest, by all means, be a priest-- but you can't e a Catholic priest, because that is against the rules. If you are gay and would like to marry, go to Ontario and get married-- you can have my blessing, but you won't get the blessing of the Catholic Church, because its rules say nay.

I can think that the rules that a religion puts out are bad rules, or stupid rules-- in fact, I do think this. But if I want to participate in the religion, I am saying that I will obey (or try to obey) those rules. I very much doubt that the sick individuals who committed the acts of sexual predation that we now know about and condemn did so thinking that their conduct was permissible-- no doubt they were all too aware that they were sinning. I am likewise pretty sure that those who concealed these things from the civil authorities knew that what they were doing was wrong-- on some level, anyway. These transgressions were not acts that were committed within the scope of the rules of the faith, and although that may aggravate the offense, I think it is wrong to suggest that something that is an article of faith is the same as something that is a sin.

I have to agree, that the Church's opinions on gay marriage is not the same as abuse of children (and I have to say that, for all it is horrible it is not the just the Roman Catholic Church which is soing such things).

The Church's opinions on homosexuality, and marriage, are pretty much pre-ordained. If Marriage is a sacrament, and homosexuality is a sin, then to bless a union, sinful at its core would be inconsistent.

Terry K.

Let me preface this by saying that I'm *for* gay people having the right to marry each other. However, the argument can be (and is) made that gay people already have exactly the same legal rights as heterosexual couples: to get married to someone of the opposite sex. It's a stupid distinction--after all, IMO the reverse should be true and *more* freedom is better (ie, heterosexuals or homosexuals should have the right to marry members of the same sex or the opposite sex) but freedom seems to scare some people.

The Catholic Church has a right to its opinions, but Patrick has an equal right to say they're stupid opinions. Equivalence or not, it's mind-boggling for an organization that has sanctioned rape to call gay adoptions "doing violence to children." As rhetorical overkill in this context, it's a little like violating Godwin's law.

And if being deprived of either a mother or a father is as terrible as this document says - well, the church is certainly doing enough to discourage divorce, even when everyone involved would be happier - but all the charity support for widows and orphans, which the church is so noted for, is hardly enough if being deprived of one parent is such a terrible thing.

Well, my stunningly intelligent comment just got wiped out by my own stunning stupidity, and I just can't exert that much effort twice a day. In brief: Catholics can do whatever they want to. Religious arguments shouldn't be forced onto a (supposedly) non-religious government. The Vatican shouldn't be talking to any government at all, for that matter, that's what churches are for: conversion through personal interaction. If you can't convert your local Congressman, well, too bad. You're the ones that don't want him using condoms when he has sex with his wife. Speaking of which, aren't Catholics supposed to be really pro-adoption, no matter what?

Simon beat me to the point about the sheer gall involved in the Vatican's "violence to children" rhetoric.

Mazone, you're right that the argument is made, but it's a stupid argument, one worthy of no respect. One might as well argue that passing a law against voting for Republican political candidates isn't unfair, because members of all political parties would be equally forbidden from voting Republican.

The gravamen of Patrick Nielsen Hayden's complaint is the Catholic Church hierarchy's declaration that my friend M---- and her significant other E----- are "doing violence" to their adopted son J----, and that God hates their action of raising him in a lesbian household.

Certainly not what I would say, were I ever to believe that I stood in the line of Apostolic Succession and wore the Shoes of the Fisherman...

Bill, you're wrong about what the Catholic religion believes. Religions don't believe anything, people do. If Catholics want a different set of beliefs acknowledged by their formal religious leadership, then they're free to work towards that change.

As far as your nice distinction between secular contract recognition and religious belief goes, the Vatican itself is crossing that line. I haven't been able to find the actual original documents, but according to the AP summary, "The Vatican urged Catholics and non-Catholics alike Thursday to unite in campaigning against gay marriages and gay adoptions".

I'd never heard about The Shoes of the Fisherman. I'm imagining a pair of holy hip waders.

"The Catholic Church has a right to its opinions, but Patrick has an equal right to say they're stupid opinions."

Even more to the point, lay Catholics--who are "the Church" every bit as much as anyone else--have a right, both legally and within the Church's own doctrines, to say when they think their authorities are promulgating stupid opinions. According to Vatican II, at times this isn't just the laity's right; it's their obligation. As various polls and surveys have consistently shown, on a whole bunch of subjects, strong majorities of American Catholics regularly do exactly that.

Indeed, the whole idea that Catholicism is just a simple matter of jumping whenever the Pope says "frog" is pretty modern. The Church's 2000-year history is full of bad leaders propounding extreme theological claims in pursuit of their own self-interest, and it's full of lay people standing up and telling them they're full of shit. I'm always struck by people outside of any religion who display an unseemly eagerness to pronounce on what communicants of that religion should and shouldn't believe--as if religions were simply off-the-shelf RPG games.

As for the idea that "The Church's opinions on homosexuality, and marriage, are pretty much pre-ordained," evidently there are plenty of serious Catholics who argue otherwise. If you're a conservative Catholic who wants to make this claim, that's one thing. If you're a non-Catholic, then it escapes me why you would want to take the side of the Church's authoritarians. Personally, I think the forces of tolerance and compassion should be supported wherever they show up, silly me. Then again, having been baptized a Catholic in infancy, maybe I have the equally silly idea that world Catholicism encompasses a great range of views on these and other questions, and that buying the habitual "my way or the highway" claims of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a division of the Vatican that once went by another name) is about as sensible as believing Dick Cheney when he imputes that being an American patriot necessarily entails supporting the war in Iraq. In both cases the current dominance of the extreme Right conceals a large and ongoing argument that is by no means over.

Final note to Bill Altreuter: I made no "crack equating the priest sex abuse scandal with the Church's position on gay marriage." I made a crack questioning whether individuals who have consistently worked to cover up their own wrongdoing (which is to say, most of the current power structure) really own anything like the sort of moral authority that these proclamations on gay marriage--and on what Catholic politicians may or may not say--would seem to require. I'm sorry that's a long compound sentence, but unlike Altreuter's misrepresentation of what I said, it happens to be the actual truth.

I've certainly encountered plenty of descriptions of the more authoritative religions that treat them like, in Patrick's memorable phrase, "off-the-shelf RPG games." This is usually phrased in the form of "This is what the N religion believes. You don't have to believe it, but if you don't, you're not an N." The history of religion is also full of people who, deciding that they didn't believe something, set up their own new denomination.

And whether the Catholic Church actually follows that model or not, I have no problem with it - so long as the religion doesn't attempt to impose its views on the secular community (hello, state laws of Utah), prevent people from leaving the community (hello, ayatollahs of Iran), or quash dissenting views by non-communicants (hello, Church of Scientology).

I wrote, And whether the Catholic Church actually follows that model or not, I have no problem with it, in which "it" means the model, not (or not necessarily) the Catholic Church. Thought I should make that clear before we go on.

"I've certainly encountered plenty of descriptions of the more authoritative religions that treat them like, in Patrick's memorable phrase, 'off-the-shelf RPG games.' This is usually phrased in the form of 'This is what the N religion believes. You don't have to believe it, but if you don't, you're not an N.'"

As I was saying, the idea that it's My Way Or The Highway is beloved of religious authoritarians of all sorts. Sometimes the people they're attacking decamp to some other group. Sometimes, strangely enough, they're disinclined to leave their communities and relatives and friends just because some faraway bigwig has his cassock in a twist. These tensions can be seen in large religious groupings ranging from Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists to Shiite Muslims and Mahayana Buddhists.

This is why religious affiliation is sometimes just a tad more complicated than filling out a multiple-choice test or choosing a CD on Amazon. A point that seems to escape those who blithely pronounce on how simple it all is.

This is why religious affiliation is sometimes just a tad more complicated than filling out a multiple-choice test.

I suppose it is. I hope you don't think I'm one of those blithely pronouncing it simple. Certainly there are mental agonies involved in leaving any such group which are not to be ignored lightly. This even applies in non-religious situations. Crewe and King in their history of Britain's SDP, recount the mental anguishes suffered by those who had to decide whether to leave the Labour Party.

So I have sympathy for those who wish to change things they dislike about their organization without having to leave it. But - leaving aside any consideration of what the changes might be - I'm even more sympathetic to those who wish to keep it the same, who need not be faraway bigwigs. The burden of choice, between suffer or depart, is even more unfair placed on them, than it is on the advocates of change.

Like, say, science fiction fans who are trying to keep a literary core to their group, and have no objections to visual-media fans doing their thing, so long as they do it somewhere else, and not try to change the nature of existing science fiction groups and conventions.

Of course, your last bit points up another difficulty: who's actually advocating "change"? The Bush Administration presents several lessons in the techniques of disguising an all-transforming radicalism as conservatism--techniques not dissimilar to those employed by the Cardinal Ratzingers of the world.

Likewise, some of the people in SF fandom whom you might think of as wanting "visual-media" fans to go "somewhere else" are actually quite a lot more in favor of the older, relaxed heterodoxy about this sort of thing. Don't be too quick to assume what side of that multi-valent argument the management of this weblog endorses.

Getting back to religion and homosexuality: gay people weren't invented yesterday, but the current Catholic leadership's obsession with them would have made many Catholics of previous centuries cross-eyed with bafflement. Who's the "conservative"? As in so many things, the claim to hold the "conservative" view is often quite unearned. The counterpoint to Jim Henley's observation that people everywhere tend to be more conservative than they admit is that most people who forcefully claim to be "conservative" generally aren't very.

Given the fact that there's absolutely no evidence to support the claim that growing up in a household with two parents of the same sex harms a child, I angry at how the Vatican is promulgating an outright lie in order to slander gays on this issue.

Simon wrote: Like, say, science fiction fans who are trying to keep a literary core to their group, and have no objections to visual-media fans doing their thing, so long as they do it somewhere else, and not try to change the nature of existing science fiction groups and conventions.

Well, except that the nature of existing science-fiction groups and conventions has always been to include visual-media fans, simply because if you are going to eliminate from your group/convention everyone who enjoys talking about Star Trek and other visual-media things, you will (a) be engaging in the kind of Thought Police activity that most fans find repugnant, and, (b) find that you have no fans left in your group except for a small core of unusual fans who have never watched TV, nor gone to the cinema, and who do not object to the Thought Police telling them what they can't talk about.

Similiarly: there have always been Catholics who have doubted the Church's position on almost anything you care to name. Sometimes what happens as a result is as spectacular as Vatican II. Sometimes it's an unspectacular as a million Catholics worldwide quietly going to their doctor and going on the Pill, on the principle that when the Church says it's wrong for married couples to use the Pill but okay for them to practice the "rhythm method", the Church is clearly being blatantly inconsistent, since the Pill merely does reliably what the rhythm method does unreliably.

This is a changing world. We may despair of someone who sits in the middle of change and demands that their little area of it not change, but we should not sympathise with them.

'off-the-shelf RPG games.'

I guess this would make my original D&D set akin to the Dead Sea scrolls.

"What is this text 'Chainmail' they refer to? Are not the holy books compleat unto themselves?"

* * *

I wonder if tepidly tolerant words about gays Bushed used as a lead-in to his announcement about banning gay marriage get him in hot water with his constituency.

Perhaps I am slicing the distinction too fine, but I don't think it was the Vatican which was actively concealing the sex crimes of American priests-- this was something that was done parish by parish, dioceses by dioceses. Here the Vatican was doing what it really should do: stating a position based upon the established beliefs and doctrines of The Church. I think the position it has taken is inconsistent with my beliefs, so I'm not buying-- that happens to me a lot. I guess that's what makes me a failed Catholic. At some point I felt like I was doing too much cherry-picking, and walked away from the orchard.

I agree with you, Patrick, that the Church has a credibility problem when it comes to sex, but I still think that equating a position taken with respect to the teachings of the Church with actual sin is unfair. Perhaps "crack" is also unfair. How about "suspect argument" or "unfair rhetorical point"?

I am a gay man, and I'd like to be married someday, with all the rights, privileges, and responsibilities pertaining thereto.

I am a Wiccan. The Roman Catholic Church has no (none, zero, nichevo, Niekas) business telling me I can't be married under law, and under my religion (which has no such weird problem with same-sex marriage; "All acts of Love and Pleasure are My rituals" being the operative scripture).

The Roman Catholic Church has "joined the culture wars" as some right-wing jackass said of the Supreme Court a while back. Like the Court, they've actually been in the wars for some time; unlike the Court, they haven't changed sides. Didn't the Pope just say a few years ago that priests should stay OUT of politics? Or did that only apply when they were trying to make things better?

The Vatican (Pope J2P2 and Cardinal Rat and all their reprehensible kind) has declared itself to be my enemy. (Long ago, but they just did it again.) I will treat the Vatican and the Church (not Catholic lay persons (many of whom do not at all approve of the Vatican's reprehensible behavior) or even priests (how could I treat the likes of Mychal Judge as an enemy?), but the organization as a whole) as enemies. And anyone who thinks they have a right to be offended by that can bite me.

Yonmei: I think I sense the straw-man thing coming up here, because nobody is advocating the exclusion of visual-media discussion, let alone its fans. (That last idea is particularly silly. Permit another example: smokers are welcome in the non-smoking section, so long as they are not smoking at the time.)

The dispute, as I understand it, is whether written literature should remain at the core, and the particular "visual-media thing" referred to is to remove that core. That removal is what others object to. That core is part of the "old, relaxed heterodoxy" to which Patrick referred; to remove it is to violate the heterodoxy.

This is a changing world. We may despair of someone who sits in the middle of change and demands that their little area of it not change, but we should not sympathise with them.

Why not? At the very least, we should sympathize with them even if we do not agree with them. But I am wary of any depictions of change as a constant or as a natural force. It's not a constant: some things change quickly, some things remain the same for longer periods. And while some change, like aging, is a natural force, other changes occur because people actively desire them and work towards them. To work against such a change is itself just as reasonable an attitude, and often works: it's just not as easy to notice.

Patrick, RPG players aren't exactly quick to accept pronouncements on how they should play their games, either. Some of the arguments I've read about rules interpretations get positively talmudic. Remind me to tell you about the Great Fireball Debate sometime.

Bill, you're still missing it. The Vatican's pronouncement used the word "violence" to describe the abstract, unspecified, hypothetical "obstacles" that a child might face after being adopted by a gay couple. What the fuck business does any organization have saying that, much less one that recently was discovered to have covered up large numbers of cases of real, literal, non-metaphorical child sexual abuse?

The dispute, as I understand it, is whether written literature should remain at the core, and the particular "visual-media thing" referred to is to remove that core. That removal is what others object to. That core is part of the "old, relaxed heterodoxy" to which Patrick referred; to remove it is to violate the heterodoxy.

You're still describing a science-fiction fandom I don't recognise: that's my point. I'm not sure we're getting anywhere with this discussion: I don't know if you've ever read Joanna Russ's How To Prevent Women Writing? It seems to me that the artificially-created concept that science-fandom has a core is pure Glotologgi. Science-fiction fandom is not a planet with orbiting moons: it's not even a single solar system. It's a universe. (Alternatively, FIAJAGH or FIAWOL. I don't mean to be dogmatic about this.) Fandom is an expanding universe. Trying to claim that one part of it is the core and must remain unchanged is, well, parochial. Copernican.

And while some change, like aging, is a natural force, other changes occur because people actively desire them and work towards them. To work against such a change is itself just as reasonable an attitude, and often works: it's just not as easy to notice.

And some changes have already occurred, and some people actively resent the change and work against it. We can call that reasonable, or we can call it backlash. It depends whether you see what is changing as positive or negative. I see same-sex marriage (finally getting back to the point!) as an issue of legal equality. I see legal equality as unequivocably a good thing. People who see legal equality for same-sex couples as unequivocably a bad thing will resist and resent the change that says same-sex couples are entitled to marry. I call this backlash: when I'm not calling it bigotry.

Yonmei: Well, you're not describing a science fiction fandom recognizable in the descriptions of the science fiction fans I know. Many of them are quite passionate about print being essential to the genre, and get very upset when it's left out, which they claim to see happening in places. Perhaps I don't know the fans you know. Perhaps the word "core" is misleading. I'm not interested in fancy astronomical metaphors; I just mean print is considered essential and primary, and I really don't recognize any kind of science fiction fandom, or science fiction history, which says it isn't. I used this example because it seemed bleeding obvious, and I don't understand where you're coming from.

I have read Russ's book, many years ago, but I don't recall anything about print vs. media science fiction therein, nor do I see how Russ's arguments against suppressing writers could be used to suppress the importance of print science fiction.

Nor do I recognize any notion that any part of science fiction should remain unchanged. Only that the -importance- of print should remain -uneliminated-.

How did "Copernican" come to be a synonym of "parochial"?

As for backlash: if a change is one of social practice, it's essentially impossible to fight against it until it's started to be adopted, so any movement against change is open to that charge, which isn't quite fair.

If the change is legal in nature, it can indeed be fought in the proposal stage, and since that's where same-sex marriage in the US is now, I find it hard to classify as a backlash a movement against a law which hasn't been enacted yet.

Ironically, though, the movement against same-sex marriage has managed to achieve exactly that feat, for what is the "Defense of Marriage Act" except a pre-emptive backlash against a law that does not yet exist?

So in this particular case I'm with you there, as I am in calling the movement bigotry. But I tried to frame my comments about change in the absence of particular cases. I think that progressives (of whom I count myself one) tend to think of change as generally an inherently positive thing, but I try to remind myself that this ain't necessarily so.

So tell those anti-same-sex-marriage folks that they're wrong because they're anti-equality, or that they're bigots, or that they're so rabid they indulged in backlash before there was anything to lash back against. But please don't say they're wrong because they're "against change" or "change is good" or "change is inevitable." Keep the argument on the quality, the goodness or badness, of the particular change.

Simon, your argument would make sense if anyone had, in fact, been arguing that change was inevitable, and therefore to be accepted. What Patrick was actually arguing was that there is a long history of change and of dissent from the pronouncements of formal authority in religious traditions in general, and in Catholicism in particular, and that the arguments that Catholicism is a religion whose adherents have to just suck up what the Pope says or leave, those arguments are basically bogus. All of this drifting off into core sf fandom and generic change, that has pretty much nothing to do with the actual points under discussion.

Avram, people -do- say that change is inevitable. ("Change is the only constant" is a common formulation of that.) It's a common enough meme that it's worth commenting on even if nobody is advocating it here. But it seems to me that some of Yonmei's remarks do reflect that attitude, or something close to it.

I only brought up science fiction to offer a simple example of a change I thought most here would consider bad. I never expected to get arguments about it.

I don't consider discussion of change in the abstract to be drift at all. If a change is good, that doesn't mean it's good because it's change, or that all change is good.

Patrick: Re your comment posted at 2:41pm: I love it when you talk that way. Do it some more.

MKK

Avram, people -do- say that change is inevitable. ("Change is the only constant" is a common formulation of that.) It's a common enough meme that it's worth commenting on even if nobody is advocating it here.

Why, exactly?

Personally, I find that conversations tend to be more useful and interesting the more they deal with specifics. Wandering into generalisms seems like a way for people who like to think of themselves as smart to show off how deep they are while obscuring the original point behind a fog of stuff to abstract to actually mean anything.

I don't see how anything could do more violence to an orphan than being raised in the flinty bosom of the social service system (greased razor blade to illiteracy, unemployment and prison).

If the church insists on all these children being born, and unprevented, they can either take care of them all or get the hell out of the way.

I couldn't look a child in the face and offer them the world hereafter after I'd mired them in the dregs of this one.

Bill: I'm sure you can find somebody somewhere who wants the Catholic Church to marry gays, in church, as they now marry heterosexuals. (Or as at least one church I know of has "married" gays but without the caveat that the religious/social action has no legal standing.) But I wouldn't hold my breath while you're hunting, so the bulk of your initial post is talking past the point at best (from a few of the posters I've seen here I'd call it deliberate obfuscation, but I don't recall your posting in that style).

And as for your claim that the pederasts realized they were sinning -- what grounds do you have for that claim? I'll grant that the priest quoted recently in the Boston Globe (-"A lesser sin to prevent a greater sin is a Good Thing, so we should masturbate each other so you won't become sinfully interested in girls"-) may have been conning his victim; can you see that the my-way-or-the-highway attitude you ascribe to religion is an invitation for its special parties to believe that whatever they do is right? For that matter, one of the more notorious cases (Shanley?) was an active proponent of man-boy "love".

To help with the arrogance, the Catholic Church has non-participating supporters like Philip Jenkins, author of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice; he's quoted as describing the ]fuss[ over priestly abuse of minors as disproportionate when compared to the attention given to teachers who abuse minors. (Has anyone had the stomach to read this? I haven't after that description.) I've heard several reports of abusive teachers, and in none of them was the teacher shuffled off to another post against the recommendation of a psychiatrist (as happened many times under Cardinal Law). What usually happens is that a mere accusation of a teacher is enough to get them barred from any contact with minors; there is never an attempt to hush it up "to avoid scandalizing the faithful" (which the Catholic hierarchy at least appears to consider a major crime, from quotes over the last year-plus). I'd argue that this devotion to hiding anything that might lead people to question is the ultimate sickness -- in a church or anywhere else -- because it bars the possibility of edging closer to any truth.

Yonmei, you mean "Ptolemaic".

CHip wrote: "To help with the arrogance, the Catholic Church has non-participating supporters like Philip Jenkins, author of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice; he's quoted as describing the ]fuss[ over priestly abuse of minors as disproportionate when compared to the attention given to teachers who abuse minors. (Has anyone had the stomach to read this? I haven't after that description.)"

I haven't read it yet, but I took a class from Jenkins in college (this was before the molestation cases became big news), and I've read enough his commentary to have an idea where he's coming from. There are two things to keep in mind:

One is that Jenkins did a lot of work studying the ritual Satanic abuse scares of the late '80s, and I think he sees a lot of similarities between the current coverage of the molestation cases and the coverage of the RSA cases. I've never read anything attributed to him that indicates that he thinks that the cases of molestation by Catholic priests never occurred, the way he thinks the RSA cases never occurred. The point he's trying to make is that there's no real reason to focus on Catholic priests, since (so he asserts) they don't molest children at any higher rate than any other clergy.

The other is that in at least one case, his work has been portrayed as a defense of the Catholic priests, when (at least in the quotes I've seen) it's not. The example I'm thinking of was Garry Wills' review of a couple of Jenkins' books in the New York Review of Books a while back. I don't have the link handy, but it should be easy to find on their site.

As far as How to Suppress Women's Writing is concerned, well, Teresa and I typed the manuscript for Joanna, not that this is any more relevant than the other purposes to which that excellent book is being put in the confused side-discussion of SF-subculture politics.

Anyway, as Avram so nicely put it, "what Patrick was actually arguing was that there is a long history of change and of dissent from the pronouncements of formal authority in religious traditions in general, and in Catholicism in particular, and that the arguments that Catholicism is a religion whose adherents have to just suck up what the Pope says or leave, those arguments are basically bogus."

I wish I could explain how complicated a relationship people have with their religion. From the outside, it looks like a rule book. Patrick's reference to RPGs is, I think, very apt. From the inside, the relationship is fundamental and non-rational. The rules are not at the center of the experience, even when they are the only thing that people can express -- as is often the case. No one I know, and St. Paul would say no one at all -- lives by the letter of the law at all times, regardless of what religion they believe. Religion is a set of beliefs and practices about things that do not map one-to-one to the real world. There are always gaps and ambiguities, and always ambivalence. One response to this is to try to reduce any uncertainty by making the rules and doctrines rigid. This is something that, as Americans, we are so familiar with that we don't even question it. It is the way to understand religion. The fundamentalist model has always been a powerful meme in the Usian culture, and it is far more so, now.

Instead of thinking of religion as a set of rules, try thinking of it as a symbol-set. A series of beautiful and moving pictures, a grand and emotional story with powerful music and great poetry. The rules are an attempt to set down in words a description of that powerful passion, a roadmap to experiencing that intense marvel. It's so very easy for believers and non-believers alike to fixate on rules and rules-lawyering. From the sublime to the ridiculous, in a way. Try talking about how you felt the first time you fell in love, really talking about the way it felt way on the inside just past the gate of words. Try thinking about describing exactly how you met. Which is easier? Is it easier to list off your 10 top rules for successful relationships, or describe the way you feel deep inside about your life and your relationship to your most beloveds?

Not everyone is religious. Many people who are religious would disagree with what I have written. However, based on 18 years as a Preacher's Kid and another 20 odd with family who are all various flavors of nut-case Christians, this is what I have seen amongst the many different types of religious people I've known.

... all of this reminds me of that nice Vatican announcement a few years ago wherein they said it's sort of OK to be Jewish. *rolleyes* It's just something they ought not to be issuing pronouncements about. It's not their business. & certainly, if they are going to be so obsessively anti-birth-control and anti-abortion that all sexual acts must have at least a potential outcome of childbirth, I agree that they should be a heck of a lot more worried about whether children get homes at all, so long as the homes are not abusive. The issue is that, yeah, societal attitudes right now may indeed lead to "violence" against adoptees with same-sex parents, but it's not from within, it's caused by outside prejudicial attitudes against same-sex unions. IE, being picked on at school is likely to be more of an issue than anything that goes on in the home. & pronouncements like this one serve only to exacerbate that problem.

Great, great comments from Lydia Nickerson above.

Yes, Lydy's comments are interesting, but I'm not sure they're all that helpful, or even correct in all cases. My direct experience seems to indicate that in many cases it's the rules that are the important thing. Perhaps this is not true of those who have had a genuinely numinous experience. I'm afraid I can't speak to that.

MKK

Must remember not to post immediately on getting an idea. That previous post is incomplete and badly phrased. I'll come back to it in the morning.

MKK

Given the fact that there's absolutely no evidence to support the claim that growing up in a household with two parents of the same sex harms a child, I angry at how the Vatican is promulgating an outright lie in order to slander gays on this issue.

David - I imagine you know this already, but it bears repeating, loudly, publically, as much as possible over the next several months at least: There is not only no evidence to support harm to children raised by same-sex parents, there is ample, even prolific evidence to actively contradict such an assertion.

In fact, the studies show that kids of gay couples may even be a little better off than kids in hetero families, at least with regards to resilience, openness to flexible gender roles, and tolerance (not that the arch-conservatives think the latter two are actually desireable traits). There is enough evidence in favor of gay parenting to convince the American Pediatric Association to endorse it.

It's going to be vitally important, if we are to beat back the threat posed by Bush and the Vatican's comments today, to say not just "gays don't hurt their children" but "research shows that gay people raise *healthy* children." The other side doesn't have a leg to stand on, research-wise, and are reduced to an "everybody knows..." kind of assertion when challenged to back up their statements with actual data. The problem is that such challenges are rare and usually private or only semi-public.

The church is doing the same sort of stuff here in Canada too. We've been presented with about a week's worth of not so thiny disguised warnings to Canada's senior Liberal politicians, who are all Catholic, along the lines of this:

"Earlier this week, Bishop Fred Henry of Calgary said Mr. Chre9tien [Canada's Prime Minister], who is also Catholic, is jeopardizing his "eternal salvation" by legally changing the traditional definition of marriage. The outspoken bishop reiterated his comments at a news conference in Calgary yesterday. And he again questioned how Catholic MPs could in good conscience vote for gay marriage 97 something the church clearly condemns."

A recent Village Voice article:

http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0330/levine.php

addresses some issues that have been in the back of my mind on this issue.

I only brought up science fiction to offer a simple example of a change I thought most here would consider bad. I never expected to get arguments about it.

Which goes to show that there is no such thing as a simple example of change that most people will consider to be a bad thing. There are always going to be people who don't perceive this as a change (it merely represents what they've been doing quite happily for years) or who do realise that this is a change, and think this is a good change. This doesn't, of course, apply only to science-fiction fandom: it applies anywhere. Having read the Pope's speech on gay marriage for myself, of course it's offensive: I fully expected it to be so. What makes it scary is that the Pope assumes that everyone he is speaking to will consider this change bad.

Anyone know what Charles Pearce had in mind when he mentioned missionaries in Africa and the South Pacific?

If the Catholic Church really thinks it's that important for every child to have both a mother nad a father, then it should be cracking down hard on parents who are single for any reason and requiring them to marry/remarry. This includes parents who've been deserted--they shouldn't spend too long hoping that the marriage can be preserved. They should get a divorce and find a more reliable partner fairly quickly.

General question: does the pedophile priest scandal impact the hierarchy's moral authority to oppose the death penalty?

Mary Kay, I'm interested in what else you have to say. However, my remarks were not in reference only to those who have had a numinous experience. I believe it applies to almost everyone who derives a sense of place or well-being from their religion. For some, following the rules and attempting to make others follow the rules creates a sense of safety. This is still not about the rules, but about a need to feel safe. The fact that, people are unable to abide by the rules they believe at all times creates a complex, cycling relationship between them and their belief system. In some ways, the more rules-based a belief system is, the complicated a relationship it has to someone's real life.

What I am trying to explain, though, is not whether or not rules are important, but why it is that people who either do not follow or actively reject some beliefs associated with a particular religious practice do not see that rejection as the same thing as rejecting the religion itself.

I really strongly agree with what Lydy said. And Patrick has a really good point about the standing of the Catholic hierarchy to say anything about harm to children at this point.

But even taking a religion as a set of RPG rules, the Catholic Church has those rules set out in the Nicene Creed.

If you read the Nicene Creed, the core rulebook set for the Catholic Church, and indeed for most of Christianity, there isn't a word in it about sex. Not gay sex, not het sex, not contraception, not marriage, nothing.

This nonsense over gay marriage, (which we have in Canada already and isn't it neat!) isn't a religious argument.

In the fifth century, people could come to blows over whether Christ had a human nature or a divine one, or both. In the fifteenth century, Constantinople fell to the Turks over the issue of whether the holy spirit proceeded from the father, or the father and the son. Those are religious arguments.

The Catholic Church is relaxing over sexual stuff though. In the fourteenth century, there were people seriously arguing against remarriage of widows, on the grounds that Christ only once went to a wedding, at Cana, and therefore people should only marry once, no matter what. That one has been forgotten, and I fully expect all of these positions on divorce and gay marriage to join it in obscurity in a few hundred years, while the Catholic Church is cheerfully engaging in debate about whether AIs can become priests and whether it's OK to marry aliens.

Bill said: "Perhaps I am slicing the distinction too fine, but I don't think it was the Vatican which was actively concealing the sex crimes of American priests-- this was something that was done parish by parish, dioceses by dioceses."

Oh, I think it's clear that the Vatican knew. This is a very old problem, and they did reports back in 85 on it.
You might take a look at a report done by the Dallas Morning News. A reprint of the article (not currently available on the Dallas site) is here: http://www.vachss.com/help_text/archive/two_thirds.html
If you want a paper version, it's June 12, 2002.
The Dallas news made an actual database of cover-up guys. You can find it here:
http://www.dallasnews.com/cgi-bin/2002/priests.cgi

I find the following quote from the article very revealing:

"The Rev. Thomas Doyle, who helped write the 1985 report to the bishops while working at the Vatican Embassy in Washington, said he thought numbers found in The News' study were low."

I find it horrifying that a group who covered up, protected, and collaborated with repeated child rapists is calling the lack of a mom or dad "violence".

For myself, I wish I could be religious. I was baptized Catholic, so maybe that's part of the problem. I never liked their rule-set to begin with. Every spiritual game I have tried to play (nice rules or not) has been ruined by one set of munchins or another. I am sticking with my own set of choose your own adventure novels for now.

I'm given to understand the Catholic Church is also opposed to the death penalty. I wonder why His Popiness isn't urging the faithful to make laws against that?

Oh, I think it's clear that the Vatican knew. This is a very old problem, and they did reports back in 85 on it.

It's not just a very old problem: it's a very international problem. Yet, notably to those of us living outside the US, the Vatican only began to pay active and public attention when it surfaced as a story in America. The American cardinals were summoned and instructed to deal with the problem: the British cardinals were not summoned, though I can guarantee that the problem of priests molesting children and teenagers has been as big a cover-up here as there. It simply has never made mass media. (For one thing - though I cannot prove it - the Catholic Church in the UK has for decades dealt with any priest accused of child molestation by sending him to Ireland. Practically speaking, a paedophile priest is much less likely to be publicly accused in Ireland than in Britain, and the public accusation and associated scandal, not the crime itself, has been the primary concern of the Catholic hierarchy for decades at least.)

Lydy: After reading your subsequent post I have a clearer understanding of what you were saying. We are close to violent agreement. But this is being a very slippery thing in my head. It is true that to many folks the rules are important for what they bring rather than as rules per se. On the other hand, have you read the link in Avedon's blog to Mel Gibson's weird religious beliefs? Gibson and his father belong to a sort of Catholic splinter group who want to roll back Vatican 2. At one point he says of Vatican 2, 'suddenly everything he believed in was taken from him.' Well, uh, no. It's my understanding that Vatican 2 changed much outward form and some dogma, but not the core of Catholicism. Of course, I'm not Catholic and could be wrong here. But it changed some of the rules and that was so unacceptable to this group of people that they've formed their own splinter group. It seems that they feel changing some of the rules somehow negates all the rules which indicates, to me, that the rules, per se, are what matter to them. Of course it's a pretty small group, I think, but they do seem to exist.

MKK

And there were all those Anglicans who left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the CofE began to ordain women as priests. There is a definite bizarrity here: although High Church Anglicans have even more incense than the pope, they are still Protestants. There are profound theological differences between Catholics and Protestants, which evidently meant less to those Anglicans than the certainty that the Catholic Church would not in their lifetime ordain women as priests - a comparitively trivial matter theologically, but evidently of great moment to them.

Bill Altreuter said, "Perhaps I am slicing the distinction too fine, but I don't think it was the Vatican which was actively concealing the sex crimes of American priests-- this was something that was done parish by parish, dioceses by dioceses."

Actually, the Vatican has been actively involved in the suppression of information regarding potential and actual sex crimes by priests (and others), and has certainly been involved in the decisions to downplay and trivialize such events. (I'm using "trivialize" in the sense of minimizing their importance.) There are Catholic doctrinal reasons for this, on some level. As I've written before, there is an underlying and basic assumption of the Church that, once you have committed your life to Christ as a priest, nun, or other member of the "Community of Christ," you and the Church have entered into a lifelong commitment that cannot be severed, and the Church is obligated to take care of you no matter what the circumstances. In short, the Church cannot reject one that has become one of Her own.

However, while I agree with the basic premise, the interpretation of this relationship in action has frequently been wrong, wrong, wrong. And, whether or not anyone believes that homosexuality is a sin, the Church has now made the distinction -- which I believe doctrinally indefensible -- that some sins are "wronger" than others. To put it another way, while child abuse is a sin, it is a "normal" sin, and gay marriage is a worse sin because it is an "abnormal" sin.

There is no way that such a conclusion can be doctrinally supported -- much less supported through any pattern of morals or ethics. I do not believe that the ethical structure of my chosen religion should be based on the model of a game of Twister.

-- LJM

Here in Canada, we've had an outbreak of Mad Bishop Disease in the face of the government ratifying the rights of all citizens to be treated the same under the law, both civil and criminal.

This, again, made me wonder where these men in dresses came up with the delusion they have any authority. They are supposed to be celibate, forbidden to have sex, to marry, to have or raise children. And they want to tell other people how to do all of the above. I think it is time they start minding their own business.

Nancy, I think the child abuse scandal and the hierarchy's handling of it damages their moral authority across the board. However, on the subject of the death penalty, they have not tangled themselves in inconsistency and hypocrisy. Their prolife stance, even where I disagree with details of it, is much more consistent, thought-out, and grounded in Catholic doctrine.

And, Dave, they do urge the faithful to end the death penalty. They have done so consistently for decades. They even get scandalized headlines for it, sometimes. But the scandal doesn't have the same resonance because, on the subject of the death penalty, they're not hypocrites, and they do have a consistent, doctrinally well-grounded position.

This is really different from where they are on sex-related questions.

But, Nancy, yes, I think that even on matters where they are consistent and well-grounded, like the death penalty, the sex abuse scandal hurts their moral authority. How could it not? It's too big, it's too bad, and it's too much a betrayal of the religion they're supposed to be the leaders of.

Ratzinger's a heretic, and he's spent the last half-century or so corrupting the Vatican from the inside.

Hi, My name is Eleanor and I have been lurking fairly quietly around here for a while. I’d like to hold forth a bit, so please consider this a formal introduction.

Firstly, I read Yonmei’s comments re: people who converted to Roman Catholicism from the Church of England, and was surprised to find that I am still very angry with John Selwyn Gummer for his weaselly behaviour in remaining on the Synod of the C of E for the decade or so after they had established there were no theological objections to women priests only to make a very public conversion when the first ordinations were made (very Anglican, that, deciding that women priests are perfectly fine but, you know, we’ll just wait a while and let people get used to the idea). Dritsek.

Secondly, the Catholic Church has (quite rightly) been getting a very bad press over child abuse and the covering up of child abuse. Sadly, it’s not just Catholics. I watched a very depressing documentary sometime last year concerning the problem within the British Muslim community. It seems that the Imams are so greatly respected that reporting child abuse can get the entire family of the victim ostracised from their community for making a fuss about something that clearly cannot be happening because holy men don’t do that. The Anglican clergy apparently (from recent newspaper reports) tend to specialise more in the sexual abuse of adult women under the guise of ‘counselling’. It seems to be the case that anywhere where powerful adults have the respect of ordinary people – and we want our priests to be powerful, and we want to respect them, otherwise what are they for? – Abuse will occur.

Third point re: adoption. Over the last four year I have watched some very close friends go through the adoption process. Two years passed between their application and the arrival of their children. If you think you can’t adopt because you’re gay, well, be prepared to discuss your medical, psychological, and sexual history in detail. If one of your close family members died young(ish) from any disease which may be genetically transmitted, consider your card marked. In remission from cancer? Forget it. Have you ever used hard drugs, or are you a recovering alcoholic? We don’t want you. Have you ever been signed off work with depression? (Being childless can be a bit of a downer). Are you, perhaps, very religious? That’s not ordinary – fervent Christianity is a bit odd.

I have to say I agree with some of the above on the grounds that children who, for whatever reason, cannot be with their birth parents deserve the very best homes – the medical rules are to ensure that children who have lost parents once shouldn’t have to do it again too soon. My feeling is that it takes too long to get children out of care and into homes where they can build normal lives.

Well. I said I was going to hold forth. Thank you for your time.

But this is being a very slippery thing in my head. It is true that to many folks the rules are important for what they bring rather than as rules per se. On the other hand, have you read the link in Avedon's blog to Mel Gibson's weird religious beliefs? Gibson and his father belong to a sort of Catholic splinter group who want to roll back Vatican 2. At one point he says of Vatican 2, 'suddenly everything he believed in was taken from him.' Well, uh, no. It's my understanding that Vatican 2 changed much outward form and some dogma, but not the core of Catholicism.

Slippery? Rather! I've been working for most of my life to come to something like a detente with God, and I don't even believe in him (anymore?). The lunatic Gibson family are hardly the first human beings to mistake the form for the substance. In fact, this is such a common human failing that the Church preaches against it endlessly, enacting various practices and preaching certain doctrines that make it all the more likely.

In my opinion, there isn't a clearly understood core to Christianity, or to Catholicism. The thing that seems to come closest to being that is the story of God and his interactions with man. It is the story though, and not the meaning of the story, that is at the center. Not even its truth or falseness is more important than its movement through the mind-space of Story. (I am sure there are useful, technical terms for what I'm trying to say. Can anybody interpret me into more sensible words?)

It's not uncommon for people to not know what it is that they like about something. It's not even uncommon for people to not know what they believe. I'm a case in point. Was I ever a "true" believer? If I was, why was it so very very easy to walk away from the church as soon as I left home? If I wasn't, why does that set of viewpoints continue to strongly color how I see the world, even when I don't want it to? The difference between belief, faith, and duck-like impression on the metaphysics of one's childhood aren't very clear. That's one of the reasons why people can so cheerfully throw away going to church on Sunday, insist that they aren't Christians, and yet never allow any challenge to their Judeo-Christian moral sensibilities.

Mary Kay,
It's my understanding that Vatican 2 changed much outward form and some dogma, but not the core of Catholicism.

That's correct. Believe me, I've debated some of the Gibson style Catholics (they're called RadTrads) on other blogs—and they think Vatican II was basically the work of the devil. Reading a book on John Henry Newman right now by an author that regrets the paucity of mentions in all the Vatican II documents about the Devil, demons and angels....

Yonmei, I don't entirely agree with you about Anglicanism. They never considered themselves Protestant (at least in the early decades) in the same sense that Calvin and Luther did. What they did is deny the authority of Rome, but in many matters, theological and ecclesiastical, they remained very close to Catholicism (apostolic succession, sacraments, etc). Slowly that's changed over the centuries, of course. But a Bible thumper becoming a Catholic is a much bigger jump in terms of sensibility than an Anglican becoming a Catholic. (For what it's worth.)

As an example, Yonmei, to follow up quickly: an Anglican was no more likely to sympathize with sola scriptura and justification by faith alone (key Protestant concepts) than a Catholic. And I think that's still true.

Its all semantics. Of course, gay people have the same (marriage) rights as non-gay people, if you define marriage as a contract between a male and a female (a gay male could marry a gay feamle). They do not if you believe the legal definition of marriage does not distinguish between male and female. I don't see that it hurts me an iota if gays marry either way, but I understand a religion taking up what they see as a principled stand against the concept. Easy answer: don't be a Catholic.

It's funny how the people who argue that gay parents are harmful to children never cite any data. Maybe that's because the data looks like this:

Anderssen, N., Amlie, C., Ytteroy, E.A. (2002). Outcomes for children with lesbian or gay parents: A review of studies from 1978 to 2000. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 43, 335-351.

Abstract: Reviewed 23 empirical studies published between 1978 and 2000 on nonclinical children raised by lesbian mothers or gay fathers (1 Belgian/Dutch, 1 Danish, 3 British, and 18 North American). 20 studies reported on offspring of lesbian mothers, and 3 on offspring of gay fathers. The studies encompassed a total of 615 offspring (age range 1.5-44 yrs) of lesbian mothers or gay fathers and 387 controls, who were assessed by psychological tests, questionnaires or interviews. Seven types of outcomes were found to be typical: emotional functioning, sexual preference, stigmatization, gender role behavior, behavioral adjustment, gender identity, and cognitive functioning. Children raised by lesbian mothers or gay fathers did not systematically differ from other children on any of the outcomes. The studies indicate that children raised by lesbian women do not experience adverse outcomes compared with other children. The same holds for children raised by gay men, but more studies should be done.

Lydia, I understand your concept of the Christian Story completely (I think). Another word for 'Story' as you use it might be 'idea'. Ideas are neither true nor false, and the difference between *good* ideas and *bad* ideas is in the consequences. The idea merely exists. (Kevin Smith's surprisingly sincere film DOGMA talks about the difference between idea and belief.) Ideas are also easier both to hold on to and to change. No one doubts his ideas, only his beliefs. I hope I don't sound pedantic. As a fellow former Catholic, I've really enjoyed your comments.

Doug, that is a remarkably easy answer--for someone who isn't a Catholic. For those of us who are, that's not an answer at all.

Catholicism has never, ever been a simple matter of blindly following whatever is handed down from Rome. Rome's pre-eminence took a long time to develop; the notion that Rome's rule is absolute is very recent, has never been uncontested, and is arguably heretical, on very traditional Catholic grounds.

I said up above that Cardinal Ratzinger's a heretic. What's been coming out of Rome for the last century on the subject of sex smells an awful lot like the old, recurring Manichean heresy, the notion that the physical world is the work of the Bad God, and inherently evil. This isn't consistent with traditional Catholic doctrine, it doesn't reflect what most Catholics believe or how they live, and there's no reason for devout Catholics to meekly accept this heretical nonsense.

And, oddly enough, Catholics haven't been meekly accepting it. Cardinal Ratzinger and his buddies find this distressing? Too bad for them. Or, maybe, _good_ for them; maybe enough faithful witnessing to real Catholic doctrine and dogma by the faithful will, at long last, show them the true path again.

Doug wrote: I understand a religion taking up what they see as a principled stand against the concept. Easy answer: don't be a Catholic.

There's a major, major flaw in that "easy answer", Doug. And it's this. The Pope isn't calling on the Catholic faithful to shun gay marriages: if he were, I'd agree that this was just a matter for Catholics. He's telling Catholic politicians what their position on gay marriage legislation ought to be - he's claiming he knows what position is "consistent with Christian conscience" for Catholics: he's saying discreet and prudent actions can be effective and suggests that these might
involve reminding the government of the need to contain the phenomenon [he means LGBT people] within certain limits so as to safeguard public morality. He's addressing politicians when he says: Those who would move from tolerance to the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting homosexual persons need to be reminded that the approval or legalization of evil is something far different from the toleration of
evil.

He means me, Doug. And he's talking to the Catholic MPs and MSPs who have the right to pass legislation or foul it up: he's suggesting that maybe it's okay to tolerate me, but it's not okay to approve of me, and they'd better not pass any legislation that suggests that the government of which they are a part does approve of me. He's telling MPs and MSPs that I should not be regarded as a full citizen of the country in which I live, because I'm a lesbian. I should not be treated as equal under the law. That is what the Pope is saying: and Doug, I can't solve that by just "not being a Catholic". Your "easy answer" is no answer at all, if you're one of the people that the Pope is fulminating against. It works only if you're straight and don't give a damn about anyone who's not.

I'm reminded of the old bumper sticker "If you don't believe in abortion, don't have one." It's perfectly all right with me if Catholics believe they shouldn't marry a person of the same sex. So don't. They don't have any right to tell me I shouldn't.

Doug, he means me too.

I actually wish this Pope would just STFU in general. But then, J2P2 and the Rat are the ones who published an encyclical condoning queer bashing, which makes me want to take a baseball bat to the next red silk zucchetto I see. I won't, of course. But I hate them.

And there were all those Anglicans who left the Church of England for the Catholic Church after the CofE began to ordain women as priests.

Others have joined the Eastern Orthodox churches, which is even more interesting.

Yonmei: The Pope isn't calling on the Catholic faithful to shun gay marriages: if he were, I'd agree that this was just a matter for Catholics.

I wouldn't. Catholics are living in my world, they're my friends and neighbors. Gay people are my friends and neighbors. Anyone who tells one groups of people in my world to practice bigotry against another such group is working to make my planet a worse place to live. That's my business.

Yonmei writes, '[The pope] is telling MPs and MSPs that I should not be regarded as a full citizen of the country in which I live, because I'm a lesbian. I should not be treated as equal under the law. That is what the Pope is saying: and Doug, I can't solve that by just "not being a Catholic". Your "easy answer" is no answer at all, if you're one of the people that the Pope is fulminating against. It works only if you're straight and don't give a damn about anyone who's not."

Ringing in with my own experience, I am now in a monogamous relationship with a woman -- a typical heterosexual marriage, in fact. However, before I married Lauryn, I was in several committed, monogamous relationships, some with men, some with women. I, along with many gay, bi, lesbian and transgender people I know, get involved in personal relationships with -people-, not advertising slogans or political agendas. It is often the case that political agendas and personal desires meet in the middle, but not always.

If I were to follow the Church's ruling in this, I would turn my back on my friends and my family, and that I cannot do.

There is the problem that occurs whenever one discusses human relations. Yes, there are poor lesbian and gay parents, just as there are bad priests, because lesbians and gays and priests are -human beings- and include all the foibles of humanity in the collective description. There are bad plumbers, electricians, writers, basketball stars and politicians, and "bad" in this case does not describe their abilities in their chosen office. It is when we say that, -because- there are bad gay men (in the sense of being abusive parents, for example), -therefore- gay parents are bad, that we fall into a trap that is of our own making.

This is what the Church has done, and I cannot even think that it is well-meaning, because there is no possible effect of this encyclical that is not pernicious.

I have to recall my wedding, when I talked Lauryn into accepting a Catholic priest as minister of the ceremony, only to find that he was enthusastic about it -only as long- as he believed the wedding would be held hundreds of miles away from his local parish. He was thrilled by the idea of the two lesbian and one transvestite bridesmaids, and the fact that the "best man" was a female friend of mine ... until he learned it would be held in Marin County, his own neck of the woods. Then you could have heard the door slam three counties over.

Hypocrisy, not gender preference, is the tool of the devil.

-- LJM

In related news an openly gay candidate for an Episcopal bishopric moves a step closer to approval
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/01/episcopal.gays/index.html

The Vatican casts Dictum, Repulsion, and Word of Chaos.

Patrick rolls.... and makes the saving throw! The attack has no effect.

Patrick responds with True Seeing, Righteous Might, and Dismissal...

Let's see if the Vatican makes its save...

Psst! Loren! It wasn't an "encyclical."

Yonmei said
... the British cardinals were not summoned, though I can guarantee that the problem of priests molesting children and teenagers has been as big a cover-up here as there. It simply has never made mass media

The only simple thing about that statement is that it isn't true. Just to take one case, I have just googled on 'bishop arundel abuse' and got over 1500 hits, with the BBC and the Daily Telegraph prominent on the first page of results. I have been reading a steady stream of articles in the UK media on that and other cases.

The then Bishop of Arundel is now of course the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, is largely unapologetic, and his past (as one allegedly covering up abuse, rather than perpetrating it) was clearly not seen in the Vatican as an impdiment to advancement. Nor has it inhibited him from expressing concern that the UK hs become a pagan society - but then it is hardly to be expected that he would see that as progress.

To Marek: You're right. I don't know what I was thinking of, and I'm not going to try and figure it out now. I need to go to sleep.

I used to work on a legal newsletter for school superintendents. The Catholic Church does not have a monopoly on transferring, instead of firing, child abusers (sexual or violent). It's probably less frequent, but there are definitely case of public schools doing that sort of thing, especially if 1) the employees have won strong show-cause principles, or 2) they're in an area where workers are hard to find, such as "special needs."

Patrick Nielsen Hayden writes:

"Psst! Loren! It wasn't an 'encyclical.'"

Er ... um ... yeah, I mean, no, it wasn't ... but I couldn't think (and cannot think) of the proper name for the ... brief? I thought it reasonable to call it an "encyclical" because it appeared to be the closest word at hand to the elusive word I was seeking. I was using (sort of) the second definition below, and the following quote from an "It's Catholic!" page (at which point Loren cheats and introduces "the dictionary citation" gambit):

Definition:9 9

1. [n] a letter from the pope sent to all Roman Catholic bishops throughout the world
2. [adj] intended for wide distribution; "an encyclical letter"

"An official letter from the pope which lays out Catholic teaching in a particular area. It might be addressed to fellow bishops, to all the faithful or to all people of good will."

That latter seemed pretty close to what was issued.

The NYT seems to agree with you and does not appear to think of the Pope's message as an encyclical:

"The document, published in several languages, including English, was presented as a set of guidelines for Catholic bishops and politicians and as an attempt to sway public debate, not as a fresh, revelatory examination of Catholic theology."

So I'm not arguing here, but I'm simply at a loss as to what to call the document, other than "sadly mistaken."

-- LJM

A historical point. The Church of England in the early decades following the death of Henry VIII was most definitely Protestant, and the dominant theology was Calvinist--to the extent that non-Calvinist theology was considered by some to be equivalent to Catholicism. The sixteenth-century CofE differed from Continental Protestantism not in theology but in institutional structure (keeping the episcopate and a lot of the clerical hierarchy) and liturgy. Calvinist theology lost its dominant position in the seventeenth century, but the church's Protestant identity was not questioned except by a few radical Dissenters. The idea of Anglicanism as not-Catholic not-Protestant really only goes back to the Oxford movement in the nineteenth century, and church historians have spent the last several decades correcting the distorted view of Anglican history promulgated by 19th century Anglo-Catholics.

John F - I'm not sure that I would be so quick to lump in Luther and Calvin as a unit. It's held in many quarters that Luther did not write with the intent of splintering the Catholic Church, he wrote with the intent of reforming abuses from within. It happened (putting the case mildly) to not work out that way for him. The ideas of both men may be used as bases for Protestant thought and sects, but the difference between Lutheran thought and Calvinist thought is frequently great.

My mother is converting to Catholicism right now. It's odd for me, it's sometimes difficult to be around. She has always had a capacity for fanatical religious belief, but there seems to be something numinous about it for her which I am entirely missing. I'm not particularly an atheist, but I am exceedingly skeptical, and if I had pure theistic sensibilities they'd probably be something on a deist model. At any rate, she is currently being challenged by friends and family, all the time, about this child abuse coverup and also about the Crusades (a little late, I think). I understand the challenges, but frankly I feel that any patriarchal authoritarian religious structure can easily lend itself to child abuse of all kinds. You'll find as many fundamentalist Christians who treat their children with extreme harshness based on the concept of "spare the rod, spoil the child" as you will find Catholic priests abusing their positions - possibly more. But the fundamentalist sects do not have a central power structure and thus are not seen as being anywhere near as wealthy and influential as the Vatican, so they are not such easy media targets.

Loren/Patrick: if it wasn't an encyclical, perhaps it was a papal bull?

Ooh, so close! I was about to suggest "a load of papal bull"!

I don't believe I've ever seen a post anywhere garner so many comments so quickly.

ARE WE NOT FEN?

The most persuasive bit of writing on the topic of polymorphous marriages is the bit in the middle of "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." Manny Davis says it well, when on trial.

If you want to commit your life, heart, soul, to another -- Wy (oming) (Kn) not go for it. Libertarian speaking, here. YMMV.

The pope is talking about me, too.

I am a straight woman married to a straight man, for 40+ years. But I am Jewish, he an ex Catholic. And not so long ago, the fulminations about gay marriages were similar to the fulminations about Jewish/Catholic marriages (my husband's mother, in the lay order of Mary, would not come to our wedding since it wasn't in a Catholic church.)

Same argument. Same shaking of finger: it will never work, the children will be crippled, the marriage will founder, evil will enter the world.

Pah. Phooie. Poop.

Jane

The pope is talking about me, too.

I am a straight woman married to a straight man, for 40+ years. But I am Jewish, he an ex Catholic. And not so long ago, the fulminations about gay marriages were similar to the fulminations about Jewish/Catholic marriages (my husband's mother, in the lay order of Mary, would not come to our wedding since it wasn't in a Catholic church.)

Same argument. Same shaking of finger: it will never work, the children will be crippled, the marriage will founder, evil will enter the world.

Pah. Phooie. Poop.

Jane

That's it! He's the Poop. Poop J2P2!!!

I'm always looking for new ways to disrespect that old monster.

Yeah, well, if only it were an easy matter of "monsters."

I sympathize with Christopher's reasons for being permanently pissed, but I'm afraid I can't sign off on quite so simple a view. For one thing, it lacks predictive power. If you view the current Pope as simply an "old monster," you're going to find yourself frequently mistaken in your expectations of what he'll do on a whole variety of issues.

As for the other argument, it wasn't an encyclical and it wasn't a papal bull. It was a document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a body which, as someone observed over on Brad de Long's weblog, "is the Catholic Church roughly as much as the White House Office of Communications is the American people."

I'm off to get on a plane back to NYC. Play nice.

Get back safe, Patrick.

We're learning that Saddam Hussein was good to his family. Everybody has a good side. No, the Pope isn't all bad. I happen to think his evil far outweighs his good. That's my judgement, based on the weightings I give his various acts and pronouncements.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the current name for what used to be called the Holy Office, which before that was called the Holy Office of the Roman Inquisition. That's right: the Inquisition. Same organization, continuously self-renewing since the Renaissance; it just has a different name.

This means two things: Cardinal Rat is the Grand Inquisitor; and it's more like the Department of Homeland Security than the office you name. Fortunately, the Church has very little political power these days, unlike the DOHS. That they're grabbing for more with announcements like this should alarm every freedom-loving person, Catholic or not.

Comaprring Catholicism with an RPG is apt; most orgonized religions in general tend to be structured like an old school D&D game. Personally, I think that is why the fundies don't like RPGs, because they're competition for modern humanity's limited pool of power to suspend rational belief.

There's only so many hours in the day that you can suspend rationality and if you spend it hunting for the dragon's eggs in the dungeon with your buddies after school, you'll be less inclined to offer incense and hymns to invisible sky fairies with the folks.

But honerstly, I think Patrick hit the nail on the head with his original assertion, that the Catholic Church has squandered its moral authority.

You can't fondle the altar servers with one hand while you bitchslap gay rights with the other. It's not only hypocritical but bigoted and illustrates the failings of many authoritive hierarchies to adapt to changing social mores.

...Philip Jenkins, author of The New Anti-Catholicism: The Last Acceptable Prejudice; he's quoted as describing the ]fuss[ over priestly abuse of minors as disproportionate when compared to the attention given to teachers who abuse minors. (Has anyone had the stomach to read this? I haven't after that description.)

As it happens, I've read it.

Jenkins has got it wrong.

Astoundingly, he calls Catholics who are outraged by the abuse scandal "anti-Catholics" themselves.

The problem, and the outrage by Catholics, doesn't come from the abusers per se. Only a lunatic would conclude that ordinantion in and of itself would prevent a person from being tempted, and, being tempted, from sometimes falling. I can't think of any group of people that doesn't include some child-abusers.

Jenkins points to the small number of priests who are abusers, both in absolute numbers and in percentages, and claims the outrage is excessive.

But the outrage doesn't come from the abusers. It comes from the hierarchy that covered up, that protected, that shuffled those abusers from parish to parish, allowing them to continue their crimes for years on end.

Where is the excuse for those bishops and cardinals who failed to alert the police about the individuals who came to their attention?

We would be at a far different place had Cardinal Law called Fr. Shanley to his office in 1989 and said "Paul, I've heard some serious allegations about your behavior. I hope that they aren't true. I just got off the phone with the district attorney. Investigators will be here in about fifteen minutes, to take your statement. I'm directing you to cooperate with them fully and truthfully. The archdiocese has assigned a lawyer to you, to aid you while you are being questioned, and to defend you should you be indicted. If you are indicted and if you are acquitted, you will be returned to your parish. If you are convicted, you will be assigned to a monestary on top of a mountain under a vow of silence for the rest of your natural life, in fifteen to twenty years (with time off for good behavior). Would you like to talk with your lawyer now?"

The bishops and cardinals knew what was right. They weren't laboring under whatever psycho-sexual burdens the abusers carried. They could help themselves. Yet they refused to do what was right. That is the scandal.

Had school boards treated abusive teachers like dioceses treated abusive priests, Jenkins would have heard the same "fuss," and we'd see the chairmen of various school boards doing hard time.

Keith: There's only so many hours in the day that you can suspend rationality and if you spend it hunting for the dragon's eggs in the dungeon with your buddies after school, you'll be less inclined to offer incense and hymns to invisible sky fairies with the folks.

Er, Keith, that sounds a whole lot like anti-religious bullshit to me. I know a bunch of folks who both play fantasy RPGs and engage in religious worship (everything from esoteric Wicca to Orthodox Judaism to Roman Catholicism), and don't see either one interfering with the other.

Avram, why do you think there's Fundamentalist opposition to RPGs? It's looked to me like an effort to get a monolopoly on weirdness, even if as you say, the fear that people will give up religion if they have gaming isn't reasonable.

James, I think the Catholic Church would be in a lot less trouble if they'd even managed a much milder policy--say, transferring priests to jobs with no contact with children after the second or third similar allegation--but they didn't even do that much.

Avram--thanks, and well said.
James D. MacDonald I think has it nailed. The cover up of the evils is what has left so many Catholics here in Boston, including my parents (WWII generation) and non-Catholics etc absolutely dumb- founded.

Myself, I think the papal er, press release, was pretty insensitive--and the timing could not have been worse. But as to the idea that the Church in general should STFU on important issues, I can't agree. I'm one of those papists who wishes old Pius XII had done a little more than just stick his nose into the affairs of the Third Reich when they were hauling Jews off to the camps. I wish he had screamed from the highest tower of the Vatican and called down a Graydon style curse on Hitler's head over Vatican radio....

Lydia, I understand your concept of the Christian Story completely (I think). Another word for 'Story' as you use it might be 'idea'.

No, idea is absolutely not what I mean. I mean that thing that has characters, plot, structure, and movement. Ideas tend to be static perceptions of what is believed to be a single thing. Ideas are things like freedom, law, the American Way. Stories are things like Rapunzel, Dune, or the Passion of Christ. It is precisely the difference between story and idea that I think is important to understand if you want to understand the way people relate to their religion. Redemption can mean many different things to many different people, but everyone knows that Jesus rose from the dead.

... having grown up absolutely forbidden from gaming by a fundamentalist parent, i can say that it is fear that the gaming will BECOME a religion. it's also a little of the Hammer of Witches - they fear that if you "play" a magic user in an RPG, you learn to become a magic user in real life, and then you might become a witch, and then you're "lost."

(but what is christian prayer if not another form of talismanic spell-casting? particularly ritualized prayer.)

and jim -
the fen ever lendeth itself to a furore.

What James D. Macdonald said. "What did they know, and when did they know it?" But the taking of responsibility by those in public office has been greatly diluted since the beginning of the sound-bite era. You go on TV, you say, (Janet Reno) "I take full responsibility," and then you don't resign. You just carry on. Responsibility is supposed to carry some weight. Where is it? I dunno.

BTW -- If you're that James D. Macdonald -- Apocalypse Door rocks! Can't hardly wait to see the movie. But get creative control, so it doesn't get mangled like Hulk or LXG.

Verbminx - It surely doth. I think you are right on the money about the "Hammer of Witches." (Though if I remember right the title was actually "Malleus Maleficarum," or "Hammer of Evil-Doers." But religious discussion coming from a Den Beste - ian engineerist with Discordian tendencies, might be regarded as tendentious, so I'll skip it. Though whether this child-abuse-by-priests is really a religious matter or not, is almost another topic. Is it religion, or law-enforcement? Isn't it just the collar that gets these guys off the hook?

Nancy: Avram, why do you think there's Fundamentalist opposition to RPGs?

It's basically because some people are stupid.

OK, it's a little more complex than that, but not much. Some people just have very low tolerance for complexity. You've probably met people who know how to sort of do one or two things with a computer, by following step-by-step instructions, but if something changes so that their instructions no longer work, they're hosed, because they can't handle the complexity of actually learning how the computer works. Or you've had the experience of explaining something complicated to someone, and seeing their eyes glaze over as you overwhelm their complexity buffer, and they say something like "Look, just tell me, is it this or that?"

That's what Fundamentalism is to many people. (Not for all -- high-complexity types can also imprint on a literalist interpretation of a religious text, but that's a different matter.) The real world is just too complicated for them, and they need someone to give them a list of simple signs they can use to tell if something is Good or Evil. Fantasy RPGs, what with all those demons and spells and stuff, trigger the Fundies' evil-detection heuristics, and you can't explain to them why they're wrong because their complexity buffers won't hold the explanation.

And there's more to it than that, of course. Role-playing, like acting, is a way of exercising your complexity buffer (because you need to get someone else's way of thinking into your head as well as your own). For a low-complexity person, having your kids turn out high-complexity can be a frightening prospect. It's like they're turning into aliens or gay atheist communists or something.

John Farrell, you believe that old Pius XII [should have] done a little more than just stick his nose into the affairs of the Third Reich when they were hauling Jews off to the camps. I wish he had screamed from the highest tower of the Vatican and called down a Graydon style curse on Hitler's head over Vatican radio....

Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, that hardly applies to this directive from the Vatican. This is not a screaming curse on the evils of homophobia, as Pius XII might have cursed the Nazis for their attacks on gays and gypsies as well as Jews: this is a polite and delicate way of kindly overlooking the evils of homophobia, and indeed finding a way for Catholic politicians to continue in their homophobic paths without seeing themselves, as they surely are, of the same kind as the people who throw stones. This piece of crap is the equivalent of Pope Pius XII speaking out against legalising Jewish marriage: it's not courageous, it's not right, and it's not ethical.

Jim Bennet: verbminx may have been thinking of Spengler's Der Hexenhammer (lit. "Hammer Of The Witches") (and I dredged that from memory, googling to see if my recall was correct -- and it was, from having read a mention of it a decade or so ago... eep!)

Thanks cd!

It rings a bell (ouch! hit that bell with a Hexenhammer, did you? Rhymes with Katzenjammer but it's not quite the same thing.)

Let's see if (I'm hoping that) verbminx will personally weigh in to settle this. My Latin is some rusty, and I had to sell the ancient volumes a couple of years ago. So if you see my Necromicon at some used-books shop, don't open it!

Or, of course, my Necronomicon.

There's a good wrong-spelling joke in there that was almost ready: a Necromicron would be, what, either a very small book of evil old spells; or a bad-smelling (or as originally posted, bad spelling) book about things that are very small? And just never mind about very small dead people.

This issue is generating some controversy here as well. In fact yesterday's Irish Times had a front page piece about how Clergy and Bishops who distribute the Vatican's latest bookley may find themselves on the wrong end on an 'Incitement to Hatred' charge. Conviction carries jail terms of up to six months. The article can be read at http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/front/2003/0802/720611077HM1POPE.html

To my mind it's not the fact that the Church is opposed to gay marriage, but that it is trying to intervene in the political process, not by lobbying politicians by by ordering them to vote against such a measure that is so wrong. For many this evokes the memory of John Charles McQuaid, Archbishop of Dublin from 1940 to 1972.

Nancy, the general reason why fundamentalists don't approve of RPGs is because they think that demons, magic, dark forces, and so forth are actually real. Not superstitions or allegories for the darkness that can exist in the human soul, but real physical actors on the world.

If you think that stuff is real, it makes sense that it would be dangerous to mess with "pretending" about it. And that's especially true if you believe that Satan is constantly trying to trick humans into doing evil, and that righteous people must always be on guard against him. Then RPGs look like the devil's snare - people get innocently involved thinking it's just a "game," when unbeknownst to them they're meddling with real dark forces that will drag them into evil.

Jim Bennett: yes, it's the same James D. Macdonald, and I agree, The Apocalypse Door is tons of fun.

Those who argue that religious figures should "STFU" on important social questions should contemplate that, had they done so in the 1950s and 1960s, you could kiss the civil rights movement goodbye.

Far better to address the substance of particular issues and the credibility of particular leaders. Xopher is, of course, doing the latter, which is legitimate.

"Malleus maleficarum" does mean "Hammer of evildoers." But "maleficarum" is the _feminine_ form, and that's why it's usually translated "witches." (Insert your own sociopolitical rant here. I've got to go get ready for church.)

Anne - My impression is that both gender forms of "maleficus" date back to the late pagan days of Rome, and meant something like "person who calls on magical or godly forces for bad, antisocial reasons." In a Christian context, anyone who calls on forces other than the divine hierarchy is being bad and antisocial, and thus "maleficus" became the general Latin term for witch through the Dark and early Middle Ages. The identification of witches with women dates to the anti-witch hysteria of the late Middle Ages, of which the Malleus Maleficarum is a product.

I don't really have a rant to attach to that, except to say that Innocent VIII, whose papal bull it was, sure did suck.

Rivka, I think you're right about the religious anti-RPG folks believing that devils and magic are real and very dangerous, and that gaming is way of getting involved with them. It's just that looking at those beliefs from the outside, it's hard to think that people could believe anything so unlikely without an ulterior motive or at least that some of the people pushing the belief have an ulterior motive.

This might be a good forum to check on something I only have one source for--Charles Williams said that one of the strong points of early Christianity was the belief that Christians weren't vulnerable to magic. Is this true?

Seth: Yes, that's what I meant; I left out most of the steps you made explicit. (That's what I get for skipping breakfast in favor of playing on the Web.) My unstated rant had to do with the Renaissance antifeminist hysteria of which witch hunts were a symptom.

Nancy: I think their only "ulterior motive" is that They Know The Truth, and it's their bounden duty to protect the rest of us from Eeeeevil.

I've never heard that Christians weren't vulnerable to magic, exactly. It might be a variant of the belief that baptism protects Christians from harm, and that faith protects sinners from Satan. (See the latish-medieval _Merlin the Prophet_ for more. Rip-roarin' theology there.)

verbminx writes: "but what is christian prayer if not another form of talismanic spell-casting? particularly ritualized prayer"

Not only that, but Christian exorcism rituals were hacked to produce necromantic rites.

After all, if a particular ritual allows you to force Beelzebub to scram, why not put it to better use and force Beelzebub to set you up with that blonde barmaid at the Trousered Ferret? Or to show you where a buried treasure lies?

I'd think a typical over-educated, under-employed, debt-ridden, single clerical worker might think that's a *splendid* idea.

Just think what the good friar Fastow and brother Skilling might have done back in the day...

Those who argue that religious figures should "STFU" on important social questions should contemplate that, had they done so in the 1950s and 1960s, you could kiss the civil rights movement goodbye.

Except that what's happening now is that the Pope is doing the equivalent of telling Catholics in politics to do whatever they can against the civil rights movement because equality for black people is eeeevil. (And what would have happened in the 1950s/60s if Catholic American politicians knew that if they said anything pro the civil rights movement, they were speaking against the Pope?)

Yes, I believe that was my original observation. What the Vatican is doing is wrong. [checking] Yep, that's what I said.

Having established that, may I be allowed the observation that categorical condemnations of religious involvement in politics are also a mistake? Or is this like the requirement that we chant Saddam-was-bad Saddam-was-bad before being allowed to criticise the American invasion of Iraq?

All of which is a somewhat snarky way of saying that I agree with all of your post except the word "except." I don't see how the one is an "exception" to the other.

Nancy: why is it hard to believe that the Fundies really believe in demons, black magic, etc.? The figures I've seen recently suggest that half the U.S.A. doesn't believe in evolution; once you're talking about belief instead of thought, discarding reason becomes easy even when it's not compulsory.

I'll grant the possibility that some fraction of the Fundy hierarchies don't believe in anything except their own power (cf Piper's discussion of the different levels of the church of Styphon in Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen -- but that's a tiny fraction of the total.

No, idea is absolutely not what I mean. I mean that thing that has characters, plot, structure, and movement. Ideas tend to be static perceptions of what is believed to be a single thing. Ideas are things like freedom, law, the American Way.

I think that the usual term for the kind of "story" that you're talking about is 'narrative'. Differs chiefly in connotation. There are many who believe that calling something a "story" means that you're saying it's not true (or True). I don't know of anyone who believes that about calling something a "narrative."

Patrick: I hope you don't think I'm one of the ones arguing against religious involvement in politics. I'm not even against Catholic involvement in politics. What I'm saying is that Poop J2P2 is, overall, a bad man; that his statements in aggregate do more harm than good; and that I wish he (that one man, which is all he is as far as I'm concerned) would STFU. Also, 'STFU' is not the same as 'be silenced'. That would definitely do more harm than good.

interesting interview with an English Catholic Bishop on BBC Radio this morning, when he explained that the Vatican didn't really mean that. It's a translation thing. The word being translated for Evil, for example, he said, can also just mean "lousy", so we're all getting the wrong idea. It sounded like rather desperate spin on something that simply wouldn't play in the UK... It's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/realmedia/sunday/s20030803z.ram

Here, Nancy, try this: http://www.demonbuster.com/

Oh, I was speaking of a general superstitious fear of witchcraft. I was probably trying to think of the Malleus Maleficarum. Much of the mindset of the anti-RPG (anti-everything-else) fundies is caused by the same kind of ill-founded hysteria. I think the buffer override comparison is pretty apt: "Danger! Danger! Does not compute!"

(Lately I've been reading a lot about the court of James I, which was corrupt and dissolute from the top down, but in the middle of it all you had this monarch who absolutely believed in witches and rather wanted to do something about them. One wants to tell him to clean his own House of Office, particularly after reading about the Overbury affair.)

PS - Nancy and Rivka have a good handle on what I was trying to say. You wouldn't believe what the fundies think will "Call on Devil Spirits."

I guess what I was trying to say is that there is a difference between speaking out in favour of civil rights, and denouncing civil rights. The difference is as easily perceptible as the difference between Martin Luther King and Pius XII.

Teresa, thanks for the demonbuster link. That one looks very sincere though crazy. There seems to be both an ulterior motive (hope that the fear will be less if everyone does what the writer does) and some territorial stuff (don't go to any church that isn't doing demonbusting).

Avram, thanks for the tact about complexity handling--I've definitely experienced that sort of overload. What I don't seem to experience is the desire to make people who overload me stop doing it in general, though I hit a point where I don't want to hear any more of it at the moment.

Yonmei,
Yes. And well said. The problem of course is that certain civil rights will never be recognized by the Vat....

Nancy, the problem the Fundies have is that they have complexity handling troubles in a very broad area of life, and they also have a strong emotional commitment to being able to make distinctions (between Godly and Satanic things) in regions covered by that broad area.

It seems that they feel changing some of the rules somehow negates all the rules which indicates, to me, that the rules, per se, are what matter to them.

Changing the rules midcourse is of extreme importance to anything that pretends to speak for God on Earth. What Vatican 2 said is that God has changed His Mind. That is, if you believe that the Pope is infallible - not just the current one but all Popes - then the Pope can't change his mind or the minds of any Pope who went before him. That is the same as saying the previous Pope was wrong. Which can't be.

Because if you can say that, then what is to say that current Pope isn't wrong, too.

The same is true of the Bible. If you believe that the Bible is the word of God, then any hint that part of it might not be true calls into question its entire contents. How can I, fallible as I am, discern the truth from the fabrications?

This is the driving force behind all historical Catholic resistance to change, including the sciences, especially astronomy - didn't God know that the sun didn't revolve around the earth? then why did He say it stopped, since He wrote the Bible and it is His word. Was God lying to us? Did He only tell us what he thought we could understand? If so, how do we know He isn't lying to us now? How do we know he isn't telling us only what we can understand now?

Can God create a rock so big that He can't lift it? If God is all powerful, can He change his mind?

Organized religion (an important distinction) cannot exist without the infallibility of its doctrine. Organized religion exists primarily as an instrument of social control (opiate of the masses, Mr. Hemingway?) devoted to self perpetuation, which falls into anarchy at the merest hint that we are making it all up as we go along. Splinter groups and new denominations are born from this anarchy, when they coalesce around a new core of infallible rules and divinely-inspired revelations. But the song remains the same - we are the chosen ones, you are doomed to perish.

Personal religion is a snake of a different stripe altogether.

If you believe that the Bible is the word of God, then any hint that part of it might not be true calls into question its entire contents.

The Fundies have an easy answer for that one. The Word is not in error, it is the interpretation of man that is in error.

I've been playing with the idea that one of the essential characteristics of a religion is retcon. The more rigid the interpretation, the more retconning is necessary. On the other hand, retcon always lets you back off, say you made a mistake, and create a different one instead. I think that one of the things that draws people to religion is that whole aspect of retconning, just like some people get drawn to fascinating but flawed television shows because they get entranced by the efforts to caulk it and make it seaworthy.

Another thing to remember about Fundies is that they are Worshippers of the Word. To a greater or lesser extent, they all believe that words, in and of themselves, have power. Hence, reading about witches or playing in a game that has demons exposes you to evil words that could be your undoing.

True story: When I was 18, my parents completely freaked out when I insisted on saying that my boyfriend was pretty, not handsome. "Boys aren't pretty," they insisted. Be that as it may, you couldn't have called Nigel handsome, either. They insisted I was corruptingt my sisters. I argued what i thought was an obvious truth, that words mean what we want them to mean, and that they don't have intrinsic meaning outside of their use. At some point, the discussion became so heated that my mother pulled a handful of hair out of my head as I bolted for the back door without a coat, in sub-zero weather. I stayed the rest of winter break with Nigel's family.

Actually, Jeff, only the Pope's ex cathedra statements are considered infallible, and I think there have only been two such papal statements since the doctrine was defined as dogma at the First Vatican Council in 1870, the most recent in 1950. JP2 is perfectly free to contradict earlier popes on other statements, as later popes will be free to contradict him.

verbminx writes: "You wouldn't believe what the fundies think will "Call on Devil Spirits.""

For example, My Little Pony. All the different colors supposedly had occult meanings.

I think there have only been two such papal statements since the doctrine was defined as dogma

An interesting aside, but the truth isn't as important as the perception. Papal scholars may know this, but the average devout Catholic who sees the Pope as God's literal mouthpiece doesn't make this distinction.

Neither does the average Baptist who sees his preacher as God's mouthpiece. Etc, etc.

Hand me another one of them rattlesnakes, Slim.

"An interesting aside, but the truth isn't as important as the perception. Papal scholars may know this, but the average devout Catholic who sees the Pope as God's literal mouthpiece doesn't make this distinction."

Ah. "The average devout Catholic" is a priestridden ignoramus who thinks the Pope is "God's literal mouthpiece." Never mind what Catholics say they think, we know better.

This is offensive nonsense in several ways. First, because it's right out of the standard suite of 19th- and 20th-century anti-Catholic stereotyping: all those ethnic Catholics, you know, they just take orders from their priests and worship the Pope as if he were God. Unlike sturdy, independent-minded Protestants who are, you know, the real Americans. This kind of thing is less fashionable than it once was, but it still turns up. Key term: "priestridden."

It's also offensive nonsense because it's demonstrably untrue. There are ignorant people everywhere, and people who simplify any system into some variety of authoritarianism. But the Catholics I grew up with were pretty clear on the idea that the Pope's authority was, to put it mildly, not the same as God's. Indeed, survey after survey of American Catholics has shown this to be the common view.

You can always look half-smart by making sweeping claims about the general ignorance and foolishness of everybody. But it's a conservative bet. You'll never lose a lot, but you'll never come up with a really new insight, either.

There's a passage, I think somewhere in the Epistles, where Paul says "Don't go to sleep." I've always wanted to show that to one of these literalist Fundies (the ones who believe that since different Gospels have different stories about the Loaves & Fishes, that the incident must have happened more than once; also that all the parables literally happened).

I'd also like to show them the prohibitions against "garments of two stuffs" -- which even the Hasidim don't take literally. (They don't wear blended fabrics, but they do wear cotton shirts and wool jackets. Uh-uh, not allowed.) Why, some of those Fundies eat pork, not to mention catfish, both strictly prohibited.

Any sufficiently advanced text fundamentalism is indistinguishable from hypocrisy.

Christopher, anyone who claims that literal a level of interpretation is in love with the idea of biblical inerrancy, not the substance of the book itself.

I'd also like to show them the prohibitions against "garments of two stuffs" -- which even the Hasidim don't take literally. (They don't wear blended fabrics, but they do wear cotton shirts and wool jackets. Uh-uh, not allowed.)

Xopher, where are you getting that "garment of two stuffs" quote from? Leviticus 19:19 (KJV) says "neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee". Nothing in there about wearing a linen shirt with wool pants. The poor literalists have it hard enough without you making up new verses for them to conform to.

Hmm. That was a quote, though admittedly from memory. I have to look it up and see if I'm JPW or if there's another translation that goes how I remember.

Us Wiccans do make up our own verses, but not in the Bible. Not on purpose, anyway.

Teresa, you're right. They're bibliolaters, which they really should be ashamed of. But I actually have an old friend who told me, in all sincerity, that the L&F must have happened more than once. I like the guy, so I changed the subject to wargaming. I think he only reported the folks who include the parables. I'd never meet them except by great misfortune.

Whatever it's a quote from, >a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%22garments+of+two+stuffs%22"Google doesn't know about it.

Here's Leviticus 19:19 in every translation that the Bible Gateway site knows about, fourteen of them. The closest is the American Standard Version: "neither shall there come upon thee a garment of two kinds of stuff mingled together".

Most of them make it very clear that they forbid mingling in the same article of clothing; some of the others are ambiguous. There's not a one that unambiguously forbids wearing one item of one kind of cloth with another of another.

Oh, it also comes up in Deuteronomy 22:9-11.

Jeff, it's a never-ending source of amazement to Catholics, what non-Catholics believe we believe--and how resistent they are to being told any different, by any such unreliable source as practicing Catholics!

I'm a Catholic, whose ancestors on both sides were Catholics. On my father's side they were relatively educated--teachers and lawyers--at least in the last two generations. On my mother's side, my mother and her siblings were proud to have completed high school, and their parents were illiterate. In fact, my maternal grandparents were Sicilian peasants, and my grandfather only barely spoke English, enough so that immediate family members could understand him.

100% of the people from whom I have heard that Catholics are required to believe that everything the Pope says is the infallible Word of God and Catholics can't argue or disagree, have been non-Catholics, and 98% of them have been Protestants, or raised Protestant.

Real, live, flesh-and-blood Catholics, rather than the bogey-man Catholics good Protestant-origin atheists believe in, argue with the Pope's pronouncements on a regular, indeed nearly-constant, basis.

What Vatican 2 said is that God has changed His Mind.

This is counter-historical nonsense.

I did not mean to imply any kind of anti-Catholic sentiments. You notice I said the same thing about Baptists, but the same thing holds true for nearly any faith with fundamentalist aspects. Several of which I have been a part of, at one time or another in my life. Infallibility is fundamental to acceptance of the rules of that faith, else it cannot exist.

In any case, I didn't say "The average devout Catholic" is a priestridden ignoramus who thinks the Pope is "God's literal mouthpiece."

I said the average devout Catholic who thinks the Pope is God's literal mouthpice. There is an implied "and" there. The average Catholic who is devout AND who thinks the Pope is God's literal mouthpiece. I certainly don't think the average devout Catholic is a blind fool, any more than I think my mother is a blind fool. But she certainly is devout.

I also never said priestridden. No keyword there.

Maybe it is the fact that I live in the Bible belt. Where you come from, people actually think about what their religion tells them. I my experience, such questioning is heresy. I spent my entire childhood locked up in one Protestant Christian school or another, being taught the literal truth of every word of the Bible. We were also taught early Christian history, which first introduced me to the idea that the Bible was compiled by fallible men (even though they assured us that those saints were divinely inspired). In my experience since, most Christians I have met just accept that God wrote the Bible, including my devout Mother. That's what they are taught in church.

Your experience is filled with Catholics who question their faith. Mine is filled with people who don't. Just as it is wrong for me to assume no one questions the Pope's pronouncements (I don't), it is also wrong to assume everyone does (they don't).

What Vatican 2 said is that God has changed His Mind.

This is counter-historical nonsense.

Of course it is. But don't you think some people believe it isn't? That was my point. At least, that was the point I was trying to make.

Going back and reading, I see where I failed. I used the word "average". That was a bad word choice and I apologize for it. I didn't mean to lump all Catholics into one category. I was trying to address those who really do believe the Pope is infallible. This, in response to the earlier comment about the splinter group that Mel Gibson is a part of.

That's also why I said "An interesting aside", since I wasn't trying to address the facts but the perception of the facts of those who hold extreme fundamentalist interpretations - literal truth of the Bible, divinely inspired doctrine, and infallibility of the Pope.

The Fundies have an easy answer for that one. The Word is not in error, it is the interpretation of man that is in error.

Followed by - you must have faith that our intepretation is the true one. Thus Paul's emphasis on faith. Faith is what saves us from the unanswerable question. And an unanswerable question is one whose answer shatters the rules. That can't be the right answer because my faith tells me that I know the truth, therefore the answer that contradicts me must not be the right answer.

Does this sound familiar? Recent words of a prominent political figure?

Jeff Crook wrote:
***Maybe it is the fact that I live in the Bible belt. Where you come from, people actually think about what their religion tells them. I my experience, such questioning is heresy. I spent my entire childhood locked up in one Protestant Christian school or another, being taught the literal truth of every word of the Bible. We were also taught early Christian history, which first introduced me to the idea that the Bible was compiled by fallible men (even though they assured us that those saints were divinely inspired). In my experience since, most Christians I have met just accept that God wrote the Bible, including my devout Mother. That's what they are taught in church.

Your experience is filled with Catholics who question their faith. Mine is filled with people who don't. Just as it is wrong for me to assume no one questions the Pope's pronouncements (I don't), it is also wrong to assume everyone does (they don't). ***

Patrick's experience, and James D. Macdonald's, and mine, is filled with actual, living, breathing Catholics. Yours is filled, according to you, with Protestants of the Biblical literalist persuasion.

Guess which life experience is more useful in determining what *Catholics* believe, and what *Catholic* attitudes towards the Pope, the Bible, and Catholic priests are.

Jeff Crook also wrote:
***That's also why I said "An interesting aside", since I wasn't trying to address the facts but the perception of the facts of those who hold extreme fundamentalist interpretations - literal truth of the Bible, divinely inspired doctrine, and infallibility of the Pope. ***

But Catholics are not biblical literalists (yes, undoubtedly you can find one, somewhere, who is, but Biblical literalism has never been official Catholic doctrine, is not a useful or informative description of how Catholics have related to the Bible over the last two millenia, and does not currently describe the beliefs of the vast bulk of Catholics today.) And, as already pointed, the doctrine of papal infallibility is, um, not what Protestants think it is, is not itself undisputed by Catholics, and fails utterly as a description of how average Catholics relate to papal pronouncements.

So, what purpose do you think you're serving by making these sweeping statements about "Catholics" that chiefly describe the beliefs, not of actual Catholics, but of bigoted Protestant beliefs _about_ Catholics?

And let's not forget what you actually said, originally:
***An interesting aside, but the truth isn't as important as the perception. Papal scholars may know this, but the average devout Catholic who sees the Pope as God's literal mouthpiece doesn't make this distinction. ***

You made a statement, not about what Protestants perceive Catholics as believing, but about what *Catholics* believe. You'd now have us believe that, despite that word "average" in there, you didn't actually mean to describe the average Catholic. The point you're still missing is that the Catholic you are describing exists almost entirely in the fevered imaginations of the fundies you grew up with, and the extreme sort of atheist who just can't wrap his/her/its mind around the fact that intelligent people may think differently.

There's a reason that Mel Gibson and his father belong to a splinter group that doesn't feel welcome in most Catholic parishes. Can you hazard a guess as to what it might be?

There's a reason that Mel Gibson and his father belong to a splinter group that doesn't feel welcome in most Catholic parishes. Can you hazard a guess as to what it might be?

Yes, and that's what I was trying to address - the reasoning, however flawed, behind their extreme beliefs, and I didn't limit my discussion to Catholics. Because I have been there, I feel like I can try to explain the emotion behind their reasoning.

I agree that I phrased it very badly, but it was never my intent to say all Catholics believe in the infallibility of the Pope. I don't have to be Catholic to know that - I can read a paper. I apologize for implying that.

You can indeed find Catholics who are biblical literalists; my high-school Latin teacher, a flamboyant Pentecostal Catholic, was one. However, Lis's point, and she's right, is that they're exceptions.

Jeff Crook is certainly right that any religion contains a broad mass of people whose sensibility isn't the same as the intellectuals'. There's a real danger of drawing false parallels, though, because different religions undergo different kinds of distortion in their folk practice. Even more so, there's a danger in using one sect's libel against another as the basic template for your critical model, which is what really gets up Lis's nose and I don't blame her.

One more thing.

You made a statement, not about what Protestants perceive Catholics as believing, but about what *Catholics* believe. You'd now have us believe that, despite that word "average" in there, you didn't actually mean to describe the average Catholic.

I didn't. I followed it up with an almost identical statement about Baptists. Not because I think all Baptists think this way, but because I was using two examples to try to identify fundamentalists from both sides of the Christian aisle. I could have just as easily said Branch Davidians. Or moon men. I wasn't trying to say that Catholics are fools. I was trying to say that people who hold extreme beliefs (Catholic, Baptist, whatever) - from my experience - haven't done a lot of research on their beliefs. Research brings uncomfortable questions. Any person who believes that the Pope is infallible probably isn't likely to know the particular aspects of the theological law that defines the Popes infallibility. This is true of the Protestants in my experience, and I find it hard to believe that there is that much difference between the two.

This same phenomena is how so many people thought that Saddam was linked to 9/11 and that the hijackers were Iraqi, even though no one from the administraion explicitly said this. The implication was established, not through facts, but through perceptions. Since I was dealing with perceptions, the facts were, to me, and interesting aside.

The point you're still missing is that the Catholic you are describing exists almost entirely in the fevered imaginations of the fundies you grew up with, and the extreme sort of atheist who just can't wrap his/her/its mind around the fact that intelligent people may think differently.

Nevertheless, they do exist in that splinter group Mel belongs to. Which was the object, in part, of my post. And the fevered fundies I grew up with were more concerned with disproving the beliefs of atheists and agnostics than Catholics. Anti-Catholicism isn't something I encountered growing up. I was probably 15 or 16 before I had any idea that people hated Catholics. So you see, the door of assumption swings both ways.

"Because I have been there, I feel like I can try to explain the emotion behind their reasoning."

I'm not as sure as I once was that there's a unified field theory that can explain all the extremes of this kind of misbehavior. Aside from extremely general observations about the human tendency to overvalue authority and abuse power.

"So you see, the door of assumption swings both ways."

Wait a minute, I thought assumption involved going through the ceiling, not the door.

Even more so, there's a danger in using one sect's libel against another as the basic template for your critical model, which is what really gets up Lis's nose and I don't blame her.

I don't blame her, either. I certainly understand her reaction. I apologize, and vow to more critically examine my assumptions in the future.

I'm not as sure as I once was that there's a unified field theory that can explain all the extremes of this kind of misbehavior.

From personal experience, my own carefully cultivated fundamentalist faith was pinged upon learning the history of Christianity and its many changes. What else, I wondered, have they lied about? Those doubts led to a prolonged extraction from the church. My mother worries about my soul.

Wait a minute, I thought assumption involved going through the ceiling, not the door.

Trap door of assumption, then.

Can we all agree that Jeff has now apologized sufficiently? I certainly think he has.

Jeff, I don't know if you actually missed the point of PNH's joke: the last time the Pope spoke infallibly was when he (whichever one it was) proclaimed the Bodily Assumption of Mary. I think. So it was not only a pun, but a brilliantly topical one.

I stand in awe, Mr. Nielsen Hayden. Remind me to either prostrate myself before you, or hurt you, at Worldcon.

Or, to quote the immortal exchange between Teresa and young SF/fantasy author Thomas Harlan, when the latter was enthusing about his and his wife's recent trip to the Near East:

Tom: And after Petra, we visited a place that claimed to be the Virgin Mary's house...

TNH: Cool! Was there a hole in the roof?

It was indeed a lovely pun. My responding pun was much more crude. She wouldn't need a hole if there were a trap door.. well, nevermind.

Xopher, there were two miracles of the loaves and fishes, and it's not due to multiple versions in the Gospels. Look in Mark 6:34ff (the feast of the 5000) and Mark 8:1ff (the feast of the 4000). Two different feasts, two different occasions, in the same gospel.

The door of assumption swings both ways, so as to hit the ass of both u and me.